TULIP TALK: Celebrating 800 years since Magna Carta

Recently many events have been held to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta by King John in 1215 at Runnymede, in what is now Berkshire.
This document is seen by many to be the absolute origin of fundamental Human Rights and many countries around the world see the Magna Carta as one of the most important historical documents ever.
In fact the “Great Document” was simply an agreement written for King John to settle a long running feud between himself and a number of rebellious barons. It was written for him by several scribes and, probably because he actually couldn’t write, it was ratified by the King’s Seal.
Several copies were made and the church took it upon itself to distribute these copies around the kingdom for safe keeping. This was very fortunate since the contents were at the time somewhat contentious and it’s very likely that had they fallen into other hands, the politics of the day would have seen them destroyed.
Today only four copies remain and all were recently seen together at the British Museum in London. Remarkably Lincoln Cathedral has one of them and the city has just held celebrations based at Lincoln Castle to commemorate this hugely significant event.
Lincolnshire Co-Op has created a project, Radiating Signals, which involved engaging communities throughout Lincolnshire to help design a flag which identifies each major town in the county with their local industry or a significant event. Spalding was fortunate in that two flags were created highlighting tulips, King John’s lost jewels, and agriculture amongst other themes.
The flags were paraded around Lincoln and its castle in a somewhat rain-affected ceremony and Jan Whitbourn and Chris Carter of Tulip Radio were invited to be Spalding’s flag bearers for this unique event.
Jan said: “it was such an honour to be invited and the rain just didn’t seem to matter to us nor the other 30 flag bearers; we went up on the castle walls and our flags were fixed to the balustrades of the battlements for all to see, it was wonderful.”
This year Lincoln has organised a special exhibition of the Magna Carta with a purpose-built visitor centre so that people can have the chance to view this document in surroundings that reflect the times and give the visitor an insight into the sort of lives led by local people 800 years ago.