Welsh regiment’s historic Colours given new life after specialist restoration

The Welsh Guards have shared their gratitude to Bangor and its University for breathing new life into their ‘Regimental Colours’, the Battle Honours.

In 2023, the Welsh Guards ceremonially paraded Bangor’s Civic Mace outside Buckingham Palace after the 140-year-old symbol of city pride received donated damage repairs in London.

When the Civic Mace was being repaired by former Bangor jewellers, Wartski, it was also discovered that the silk and gold threaded Guards Colours, laid up at Bangor Cathedral only 12 years earlier, were riddled with mould, fast-spreading mildew, soaking in damp and in need of urgent treatment

In years past, Regimental Colours would be carried on to the battlefield as rally-points for troops and officers. They are presented to a Regiment only by a Monarch, then periodically ‘laid up’ in churches or cathedrals as new ones are dedicated.

Former Bangor City Councillor and ‘Red Beret’ paratrooper Mark Roberts, who acted as liaison with the Regiment, explained: “Unfortunately, as with any cathedral heritage issues, it took more than eighteen months of meetings and other formalities before the Welsh Guards were finally given permission to recover their Colours … and then to restore them.”

However, restoration of the delicate battle relics proved to be difficult. Here, the Welsh Guards became indebted to Bangor University’s staff at the molecular biology department of Brambell Building and its senior lecturer, Dr Anil Sherit.

Mark Roberts added: “The generosity of devoted research work and processing through their laboratories has been astounding. They even overturned conventional and published thinking on how to cure delicate silks of mould and mildew.

“Official advice is to expose them to ultra-deep freezing to kill the pores. Bangor University instead placed them into laboratory ovens set at 60 degrees for three days. 

“They ruled out the recommended soft detergent cleaning with toxins … and instead suggested infusing the material in sterile vinegar. The Colours can now expect at least 300 years of new life if properly hung.

“Ironically, these are the same University laboratories that gave birth to the undergraduate career of Nobel-Prize-winning biologist Robert Edwards, who discovered means of IVF and thus gave life to thousands of babies … now breathing new life into the Regimental Colours!”

‘Tremendously grateful’

Welsh Guards Regimental Adjutant, Lt. Col. Guy Bartle-Jones, said: “Given how recently we had laid up our Colours at Bangor cathedral we were disappointed at how quickly they had succumbed to mould and damp.   Through no one’s fault, they had probably been incorrectly hung in the first place. 

“We are tremendously grateful to Bangor University Brambell staff and academics for their work in finding a solution. These Colours actually carry the Honours of the Falklands War on them and so are contemporary and there are many, many former Welsh Guardsmen in north Wales who will hold them dear.”

City Director Martin Hanks said: “The pride we all had in seeing the Welsh Guards parade our Civic Mace in London in 2023 and the fantastic TV publicity that event brought to Bangor from around the world was, we thought, the end of it. 

“How lovely to now learn that Bangor has been able to return the favour to the Welsh Guards in something as valued to them as our City Mace is to us!”

Historically sensitive 

Dr Anhil Shirsat of Bangor University’s molecular biology department said: “Our department has contributed to many, many fantastic breakthroughs in science and now cancer research, but never before been tasked to something as simple – and yet historically sensitive – as Regimental Colours.

“We were delighted to help.”

Mark Roberts, who was also behind the gifting of repairs of the civic mace in London added: “Quite by coincidence when helping the Welsh Guards solve their problem, I also found what had been assumed to be the long-lost Standard of our own Parachute Regimental Association, hidden in a dark, damp corner of the Cathedral. 

“Now that the University has shown me what should be done – that’s the next to restore!”

A brief re-dedication of Colours and re-mounting in a new area of the Cathedral is being planned for Spring.