IT FLIES every day, come
rain, shine, and all the horrible weather we have been having. So
no wonder the flag on Bath Abbey was looking tatty, despite several
loving repairs. When the chief executive of Bath Tourism Plus, Nick
Brooks-Sykes (left), who walks past the abbey on his way
to work each day, went so far as to mention it, the abbey
authorities decided that they had better get a new one and ask Mr
Brooks-Sykes to help raise it.
The responsibility became
that of the director of the abbey's Footprint Project, Charles
Curnock. Early this month he and Mr Brooks-Sykes performed an
unofficial flag-raising ceremony with a bigger and better flag. It
bears the arms of the diocese of Bath & Wells
in the top left-hand canton of the St George flag. It conforms to
the rule laid down in 1938 that the proper flag to be flown on any
church within the two provinces of Canterbury and York is the cross
of St George, with the arms of the see in the first quarter.