'Too much going on, I hate it!' Shropshire's county flag ranked worst in England by TikTok flag fanatic

Shropshire came bottom in a list of ceremonial county flags ranked by TikTok star Liam Sanford, who has almost 44,000 followers and 1.4 million total likes on the platform.

Liam makes videos celebrating and critiquing the world's flags, from the most ubiquitous to the most obscure, on his channel liam.sanford, in the form of competitions, rankings and trivia questions.

Earlier this week he answered a challenge from one of his viewers to rank all of England's ceremonial county flags, which all include elements representing their unique charms.

For example, Shropshire's famous design includes three fearsome leopards' faces, known as 'loggerheads', which have been a staple on Shrewsbury's town flag for centuries. The blue and yellow colours are thought to derive from Roger de Montgomery, the first Earl of Shrewsbury.

Staffordshire's flag, meanwhile, prominently features the Stafford knot in gold.

There are 48 'ceremonial' counties in England, also known as lieutenancy areas, but not all of them have official ceremonial flags: the relatively young West Midlands county, which includes the Black Country and is made up of parts of historic Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire, does not have a flag and so escaped Liam's gaze.

The other counties he did not rank because they do not have ceremonial county flags are Bristol, Cumbria, East Sussex, Greater London, Merseyside, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Tyne & Wear, West Sussex and West Yorkshire.

It left 37 counties to be ranked, and he quickly decided that Shropshire's poor loggerheads weren't to his liking.

"Shropshire's flag has just got too much going on. I hate it," he said in placing Salop 37th in his list of 37, before quickly moving on.

At least the second-lowest in his list, Oxfordshire number 36, "isn't much better".

Shropshire viewers took the low ranking in good humour - one commented: "Let’s go! Shropshire won something, even if it’s at losing."

Another replied: "I love our flag. Was sad to see it come last."

See more of Liam's videos at tiktok.com/@liam.sanford.