Flags
Yorkshire Day celebrations are an annual event in Otley, where we fly the commemorative flags above our businesses throughout the town.
It’s an interesting story how they come about:
Back in 2011 Prince William and Kate were due to be married and our BID Champion, Tim Wilkinson, was then on the Chamber of Trade Committee and felt that Otley needed to celebrate the historic event in some way….and the idea of the Flags was born.
He counted the Christmas Tree brackets above the businesses, of which there were approx. 100 and Tim set about making, by hand, 100 flags.
After a positive reaction, we repeated for the Queens Jubilee in 2012 and later that year Otley Town Council bought Olympic flags and the town also created a display for that.
The flying of the Yorkshire Day flags has been an annual event on 1st August from then on.
Around 2018 Otley Town Council took over the erection and removal of the flags from the Chamber of Trade and Otley BID agreed to fund the maintain and renewal any old weather beaten flags on an annual basis.
Tim still looks after the maintenance of the flags, of which we now have over 200 flags. They area also stored by another BID Director, Katie Burnett.