PENKHULL FLAG FLIES HIGH AFTER IT TAKES WORLD CROWN

Village received 51% of votes in Twitter poll

IT’S official. Penkhull is the proud owner of a world champion flag.

The village’s flag was declared victorious after competing in the Flag Institute’s World Series of Flags 2020 competition on social media.

Penkhull took home 51 per cent of the vote, narrowly beating the runnerup – the flag of Tiree, below, an island in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland.

The popular Twitter poll has seen towns and cities from across the UK, Ireland, France and America take part, before Penkhull took the crown.

The village beat off competition from Dun Laoghaire in Ireland, another Scottish island in South Uist, St Louis in the USA and Bloxwich, near Walsall, to make it to the final.

Communities in Stoke-on-trent and North Staffordshire rallied round to vote Penkhull to victory.

The Penkhull flag was designed from a village competition and chosen by public vote just two years ago. It flies proudly from the flagpole in the centre of the village.

The green represents its village-like qualities within the city while the saltire represents the crossroads at the centre, around which the village has grown.

The blue oval stands for the Potteries classic Spode Italian tableware – Josiah Spode having lived in Penkhull with his pottery works down the road in Stoke – and finally the cockerel symbolises the weather vane atop St Thomas’ Church steeple.

Antony Bradshaw, Penkhull Flag’s team manager, said before the final vote: “After a series that has involved seven nations it seems fitting that the final of a community flag competition should be between a small village and a small island.

“Both of us have a wide following and in Penkhull, with a population of only 6,000, we will certainly be relying once again on our friends around the City of Stoke-on-trent and beyond.

“Penkhull is the only flag in North Staffordshire and Stokeon-trent to be registered with the UK’S Flag Institute, so every vote for the Penkhull flag is a vote for our part of the world.”