From independent Iron Age Celtic tribes, through nearly four centuries of Roman provincial rule and Hadrian's Wall, to an Anglo-Saxon kingdom with no attested flag of its own, then St George's Cross, two royal unions a century apart, and finally the Union Flag itself — seven entities across roughly twenty-eight centuries, and one flag design that has now outlasted the empire it once flew over by more than seventy years.
The Union Flag familiar today was fixed in 1801 and has not changed since — not even in 1922, when the state it represents lost most of Ireland. The red diagonal added that year for St Patrick still flies for Northern Ireland alone.
Scope of this page: the flags of the central English/British crown and state, c. 800 BCE–present, seven political entities. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Ireland each carry their own distinct flag lineages, only partly overlapping with this one — see the British Isles hub and their own pages as this atlas fills in.
England, Scotland, and Wales: three kingdoms to one
The same real traced England/Scotland/Wales border used in the British Isles hub, replayed here as its own five-step story: an independent Wales absorbed by conquest, a Scotland that keeps its own government for a century after sharing a king, and the single Acts-of-Union merger that finally dissolves every internal line. Press play, or drag the slider.
Sharing a king was never enough on its own. England and Scotland shared one monarch from 1603, yet kept separate parliaments, separate law, and separate churches for the next 104 years — so the Scotland–England line below stays solid right through the Union of the Crowns. It only dissolves in 1707, when the Acts of Union actually merge the two governments into one.
c. 800 BCE
Celtic Britain, Roman Britain & the Anglo-Saxon Settlement
Real traced coastlines (simplified), the same England/Scotland/Wales split used in the British Isles hub. Ireland and France's northern coast are shown faint for context only, across the Irish Sea and the Channel; Northern Ireland is out of frame — it follows its own union and partition story on the hub's own map.
the Union Flag, unchanged since 1801
1922 – present
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
United KingdomDavid Lloyd GeorgeChurch of England (established in England only)
Migration & conquest:Immigration: Windrush-generation Caribbean migrants (1948–)Immigration: South Asian Commonwealth migrants (1950s–70s)Emigration: assisted passage to Australia & Canada (1945–72)
Ruling house:House of Windsor
Who & why: the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 gives twenty-six Irish counties dominion status as the Irish Free State from 6 December 1922; Northern Ireland's own Parliament exercises its treaty right to opt back into the UK within the first month, splitting the island for the first time in its history. The state's new name is only made official five years later, by the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 — the practical territorial change is 1922, the formal renaming 1927.
What it represents: the flag itself does not change at all in 1922 — the same Union Flag fixed in 1801, with St Patrick's red diagonal still standing for Ireland, simply keeps flying, now representing Northern Ireland's continued place in the union rather than the whole island's.
Paint guide
Proportions1:2, official Admiralty ratio.
LayoutBlue field; white-fimbriated diagonal cross of St Andrew, countercharged with St Patrick's red diagonal offset toward the hoist; St George's red cross fimbriated white, centered.
Blue#0065BD
White#F4EFE1
Red#9C3B28
St Patrick's red diagonal is added, completing the modern Union Flag
1801 – 1922
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
United KingdomWilliam Pitt the YoungerChurch of England & Church of Ireland (established)
Who & why: the 1798 Rebellion convinces the British government that a separate Irish Parliament is a standing security risk; the Act of Union 1800, in force from 1 January 1801, abolishes it outright and merges Ireland into Westminster. Catholic Emancipation, informally promised as part of the deal, is blocked by George III and not delivered until 1829 — a broken promise that shapes Irish politics for the rest of the century.
What it represents: the 1707 Union Flag gets a fourth element, St Patrick's red saltire, counter-changed with St Andrew's white diagonal to keep both visible — the exact design still flown today, one of the very few state flags never once redesigned in over two centuries.
Paint guide
Proportions1:2, official Admiralty ratio.
LayoutIdentical to the flag above — this is the moment it was created, not a later variant.
Blue#0065BD
White#F4EFE1
Red#9C3B28
the first Union Flag, now an official state flag, without Ireland's red
1707 – 1801
Kingdom of Great Britain
Unified kingdomQueen AnneChurch of England & Church of Scotland (established)
Migration & conquest:Emigration: convicts transported to Australia (1788–)Emigration: Highland Scots displaced by early Clearances
Ruling house:House of StuartHouse of Hanover
Who & why: a century of shared monarchs finally becomes a shared government: the Acts of Union, in force from 1 May 1707, dissolve both the Scottish and English parliaments into one new Parliament of Great Britain at Westminster. Scotland keeps its own legal system, established Presbyterian church, and education system, all guaranteed by treaty — the merger driven as much by the financial wreckage of Scotland's failed Darien colonial scheme as by any shared vision.
What it represents: the 1606 combination flag, previously just one option among several and used mainly at sea, becomes Great Britain's official flag for the first time — a political merger finally catching up to a symbol that had existed for a century already.
Paint guide
ProportionsNo single fixed ratio in this period; treated here as 3:5.
LayoutBlue field; St George's red cross fimbriated white, over St Andrew's white diagonal saltire.
Blue#0065BD
White#F4EFE1
Red#9C3B28
James's 1606 combination flag, used at sea rather than by law
1603 – 1707
Personal Union of England and Scotland (Union of the Crowns)
Personal unionJames VI & IChurch of England & Church of Scotland (established)
Who & why: Elizabeth I's death without an heir in March 1603 passes the English succession to her cousin James VI of Scotland, who becomes James I of England as well — one monarch, two kingdoms, each keeping its own parliament, law, and church. James's own bid to formally merge them as a single "Great Britain" is rejected by both parliaments in 1606–07 and goes nowhere for another century.
What it represents: James's 1606 royal proclamation combines St George's cross and St Andrew's saltire into a single flag for ships of both kingdoms at sea — the first Union Flag, but a decorative and naval convenience rather than a legal national flag, since no single nation yet existed for it to represent.
Paint guide
ProportionsNot standardized; treated here as 3:5.
LayoutIdentical composition to the flag above — this is its origin, before it carried any political authority.
Blue#0065BD
White#F4EFE1
Red#9C3B28
St George's Cross, one of the oldest national flags still in use
c. 1200 – 1603
Kingdom of England (with Wales)
KingdomRichard I (the Lionheart)Roman Catholic (Church of England from 1534)
Migration & conquest:Emigration: expulsion of the Jewish community (1290)Immigration: Continental Protestant refugees (16th c.)
Ruling house:House of PlantagenetHouse of Tudor
Who & why: St George's Cross comes into wide use around the time of Richard I's Third Crusade (1189–99) and is well established as England's flag by the 13th century. Edward I completes the military conquest of Wales in 1282–83, killing Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and formalizing English rule with the 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan — his own son becomes the first English Prince of Wales in 1301 — but Wales stays administratively distinct until Henry VIII's Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542 fully incorporate it, with English law, English-style counties, and its own seats at Westminster for the first time. The Wars of the Roses (1455–87) and the Tudor century that follows both play out under this same flag.
What it represents: a red cross on a white field, England's own colors since the Crusades and still flown today as England's flag within the wider Union Flag — unlike the union it later joins, this design has never once been altered.
Paint guide
ProportionsNo fixed medieval ratio; treated here as 3:5.
LayoutWhite field, red cross, arms one-fifth the flag's width.
White#F4EFE1
Red#9C3B28
placeholder maroon field — pre-heraldic era, no flag survives
Who & why: Æthelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, is traditionally recognized as the first king to rule all of England after his 927 conquest of Northumbria and the submission of the Welsh, Scottish, and Cornish rulers at Eamont Bridge. The kingdom survives Danish conquest (Cnut, from 1016), Norman conquest (William I's victory at Hastings, 1066, which replaces the Anglo-Saxon ruling elite but leaves the kingdom itself intact), and the disputed Anarchy of Stephen and Matilda (1135–53). Wales, meanwhile, remains a patchwork of independent native princedoms throughout — the strongest, Gwynedd, ruling in its own right with no English overlord yet in practice.
What it represents: no securely attested national flag survives from Anglo-Saxon or early Norman England; royal and personal devices existed (a golden dragon associated with Wessex among them) but nothing resembling a fixed territorial banner predates St George's Cross. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented.
Paint guide
ProportionsN/A — no attested flag.
placeholder — no flag concept existed in Iron Age, Roman, or early Anglo-Saxon Britain
c. 800 BCE – 927 CE
Celtic Britain, Roman Britain & the Anglo-Saxon Settlement
Successive civilizationsBoudicaCeltic & Roman polytheism, then early Christianity, then Anglo-Saxon paganism
Migration & conquest:Conquered by: Rome (43 CE)Immigration: Anglo-Saxon settlers from Germania (from c. 450 CE)
Who & why: Iron Age Britain from roughly 800 BCE is home to independent Celtic tribes — the Catuvellauni, Iceni, Brigantes, and others — with their own hillforts, coinage, and warrior aristocracy, briefly visited but not conquered by Julius Caesar's expeditions of 55–54 BCE. Emperor Claudius's invasion in 43 CE begins nearly four centuries of Roman provincial rule, interrupted by revolts such as Boudica's in 60–61 CE, and marked by Emperor Hadrian's construction of his namesake wall from 122 CE to fix the empire's northern frontier. Rome withdraws its remaining troops around 410 CE as the western empire collapses; Angle, Saxon, and Jutish settlers then migrate in and found a shifting patchwork of small kingdoms — the "Heptarchy" — until Æthelstan unifies them into the Kingdom of England in 927.
What it represents: no flag in any modern sense existed across this span; Celtic tribes used coinage and metalwork devices, Roman legions carried standards such as the aquila, and early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms used personal and dynastic emblems rather than fixed national banners. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented.
World context: Hadrian's Wall, begun in 122 CE and stretching 73 miles coast to coast, ranks among the Roman Empire's great engineering works and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site; Rome's withdrawal from Britain around 410 CE comes the same year Alaric's Visigoths sack Rome itself; and the Anglo-Saxon settlement that follows runs alongside the Byzantine Emperor Justinian's construction of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (532–37 CE).
Paint guide
ProportionsN/A — no attested flag from any phase of this era.
Reading the tags
Pre-heraldic — no flag survives
Kingdom — single sovereign crown
Personal union — one monarch, separate governments
Unified / United Kingdom — one government, one parliament
Leader — the named ruler most associated with the era's start
State religion — the official/established faith, not the population's
Find the records
Family history research for United Kingdom lives in a different project, Record Atlas, which maps which archive actually holds the paper for a given place and era.