The Flag for Aberdeenshire

The ‘Flag for Aberdeenshire’ project was set up in March 2022, when the Lord-Lieutenant, Mr Alexander Manson, discovered that while Aberdeenshire had a long standing coat of arms it didn’t have a county flag. Two Deputy Lieutenants, Miranda McHardy and Jean Haslam, agreed to take this historic project forward and run a competition to design a flag for Aberdeenshire. With the help of Philip Tibbetts (Lyon Court Vexillologist for Scotland) a committee was formed, with the Press and Journal agreeing to publicise, collect entries and manage the public voting. Workshops were run by Philip Tibbetts during the first week in September in schools across the county. The competition went ‘live’ immediately after this, with 820 entries being submitted during October (reputedly the largest ever response to a flag competition in Scotland). A short-list of five designs were selected by the committee under the guidance of the Lord Lyon and Philip Tibbetts. These five then went to a public vote during December 2022 and into the first week of January 2023, with 4,208 votes cast.

The winning flag was revealed at a special unveiling ceremony at Castle Fraser (by kind permission of the National Trust for Scotland) on Saturday 22nd April 2023. The children who created the winning design were escorted to the front of the castle by The Drums & Pipes of The Gordon Highlanders Association and an ‘Honour’ Guard from The Lonach Highlanders. There they presented the flag to the Lord-Lieutenant and accompanied him to the top of the castle tower, where the flag was raised. From that moment on, Aberdeenshire has been proudly displaying its own county flag!

If you wish to order your own Aberdeenshire Flag, we encourage you to look to purchase from the Flag Institute's Certified British Flagmakers and other Trade Members - a list of which can be found here.