Why Durham and Ukraine share the colours blue and yellow

A photograph released this week by the county’s Conservative MPs at Westminster in solidarity with Ukraine was striking for the similarity between the colours of the places which are 2,000 miles apart.

County Durham MPs Paul Howell, Jill Mortimer, Richard Holden, Dehenna Davison, Peter Gibson with the County Durham flag and the Ukrainian flag

Durham’s blue and yellow probably dates back 700 years whereas Ukraine’s blue and yellow may well be more than 1,000 years old.

Blue and yellow, for water and fire, were probably the colours of Kyivian Ruthenia, a forerunner of Ukraine, as far back as the late 9th Century. The Kingdom of Ruthenia, which controlled the area from 1199 until 1348, used a yellow lion on a blue background as its emblem.

Arms of Ruthenia in the 13th Century, from which Ukraine derives its blue and yellow colours

Ruthenia was later split between Poland and Lithuania, then between Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When revolutions rocked Europe in 1848, the blue and yellow flag in Lviv became the colours of Ukrainian nationalists, but their dreams didn’t come true until 1917 when they were able to form the Ukrainian People’s Republic which had a blue and yellow flag.

The republic lasted less than three years before Ukraine became a Soviet Socialist Republic. The red Soviet flag, with golden hammer and sickle, flew in Ukrainian towns as anyone showing the blue and yellow would be arrested for “anti-Soviet propaganda”.

It remained banned until 1991 when Ukraine declared independence and blue and yellow became the symbol of the people’s freedom, as we see today.

The blue and yellow coat of arms of the Bishop of Durham

Durham’s blue and yellow probably comes from Thomas Hatfield, a Yorkshireman who was a successful Bishop of Durham from 1345 to 1381. He fought against the French alongside Edward III at the Battle of Crecy – he was the last warrior bishop – and he developed Durham’s independence. His arms featured a yellow chevron on a blue background with three white lions.

Just as the Ukrainians looked back fondly on the colours of Ruthenia, so Durham people looked back fondly on the colours of last warrior bishop. Therefore, from the 15th Century, the Bishop of Durham adopted Bp Hatfield’s coat of arms which featured four white lions on a blue background separated by a yellow cross, and so Durham’s colours became blue and yellow.

Durham County Council was formed in 1889 and it used the arms and colours of the bishop until 1961 when, to coincide with its new headquarters at Aykley Heads, it tinkered about with the bishop’s coat of arms to create its own emblem.

The Durham County Council coat-of-arms from a 1961 booklet about the opening of the new County Hall at Aykley Heads. It is blue and goldy yellow, honest, with five black lozenges to represent the coal industry

A booklet from 1961 about the new headquarters, which has been kindly sent by Cllr John Shuttleworth, tells how the council’s new arms copied Bp Hatfield’s in featuring white lions but the council put coronets on their heads to symbolise the old power of the prince bishops.

The yellow cross – well, the council went for a grand gold cross – had five black lozenges on it because they are “used to represent coal and the industries dependent upon it”, says the booklet.

The new coat of arms of Durham County Council

In 1972, when the council’s boundaries were moved to take in Startforth to the south of Barnard Castle, which is over the Tees in Yorkshire, the central black lozenge was replaced by the white rose of Yorkshire.

The county used the council’s emblem as its flag until 2013 when flag enthusiasts remedied the fact that Durham was the only northern county without its own flag by holding a flag-designing competition. It was won by Katie and Holly Moffatt, of Chilton, whose design featured the shape of the cross that was found on the body of St Cuthbert coloured in the county’s traditional blue and yellow.

The new blue and yellow flag of County Durham

And so when Durham’s Conservative MPs raised flags in Westminster to show solidarity between two parts of the world, the blue and yellow of Ukraine stood shoulder to shoulder with the blue and yellow of Durham.