A joint initiative of BBC Radio Suffolk and the East Anglian Daily Times, supported by Suffolk County Council, June 21st, the longest day of the year, was selected as the Suffolk county day to highlight the fact that the county is the most easterly

in the UK – with Ness Point, Lowestoft,

being the first place in the country to see sunrise. The day was chosen to celebrate the county’s character and many cultural assets, its food and drink, landscapes, wildlife, business, history and sports. The inaugural Suffolk Day was on June 21st 2017, an occasion marked with use of a special logo

which featured the county’s traditional crown and arrows emblem. The occasion saw the first raising of the county’s flag, the armorial banner of Saint Edmund, by the county council

The flag was subsequently much in evidence the following year, being raised in Felixstowe

Tattingstone

Sudbury

and Ipswich

The other day of course, for county residents to display the Suffolk flag, is November 20th, the feast day of Saint Edmund, the county’s patron saint and the last King of East Anglia, whose armorial banner

of course, is the county flag. He was reportedly murdered by the Danes in the year 870, when, at a meeting with the invaders, he refused to share his kingdom. He was scourged, bound to a tree,

shot with arrows

and then decapitated. Edmund’s arms accordingly reflect his kingship and the manner of his death. A vast oak tree, located north of the village of Hoxne, near the Norfolk border, was believed to have been the tree to which Edmund was tied, it collapsed suddenly one night in 1843, and a monument to the martyred king was erected, in 1849, at the spot where the oak stood

boldly decorated with the saintly monarch’s arms

which are accordingly also found on the county flag.

Effectively a second county day for Suffolk, the date was celebrated with particular enthusiasm in 2019. The flag was displayed around the county by groups and businesses including Walpole village;

Ringsfield Village Hall;  

“The Toy Box”, toy shop, Beccles;

The Hog Hotel, Pakefield;

 

The Kensington Tea Rooms, Lowestoft;

Landguard Fort, Felixstowe;

the Lowestoft Distillery Company;

the Suffolk Family History Society’s Lowestoft Branch;

Rural Enterprise East;

Lowestoft North Royal Artillery Cadet Detachment;

and B-Company Suffolk Army Cadets at their cadet training centre in neighbouring Norfolk