Remembrance in Hungerford and the Lambourn Valley
District prepares to honour the fallen, 100 years after WW1 ended
HUNGERFORD will remember the fallen on Sunday with a service at St Lawrence Church at 9.30pm and with a parade to the 11am ceremony at the war memorial.
In the evening a beacon will be lit to commemorate the centenary of the end of the First World War.
This will take place in Triangle Field from 6.30pm. At 6.40pm town mayor Helen Simpson will welcome the crowd and read Tribute to the Millions.
At 6.50pm the Royal British Legion will read the Exhortation and at 6.55pm the Last Post will be played.
The beacon itself will be lit at 7pm and immediately afterwards town crier Robin Tubb will read The Cry for Peace Around the World.
Children and adults are invited to plant their wooden crosses in the Poppy Field following the service. The rugby club bar will be open and there will be food available.
LAMBOURN residents will join in an Act of Remembrance at the War Memorial in the village square.
The choir and clergy will gather around the War Memorial and at 11am there will be a two-minute silence. A short church service will take place afterwards. At 12pm all are welcome to a complimentary buffet at the Royal British Legion.
GREAT SHEFFORD has been decorated with thousands of bright red hardboard poppies made by members of the Shefford Craft Club (pictured) which have been fixed to signs and railings. Villagers have also been invited to take a poppy home to put on their own front door or gate. Donations for these poppies will be split equally between the Royal British Legion and the Great Shefford Flood Alleviation Appeal.
In addition, the trees overlooking the war memorial in the churchyard at St Mary’s Church have been adorned with thousands of poppies, all created by the club and other residents of the village and surrounding communities. They have been busy knitting, crocheting and sewing for the last two years to produce a varied arrangement wrapped round many of the lime trees leading up to the church.
Craft club member Ann Muir has also created two panels decorated with red, white and purple poppies and historic photos which will be displayed in St Stephen’s Church in Shefford Woodlands and St Mary’s Church in Great Shefford. White poppies commemorate non-combatant victims of war and purple poppies commemorate animal victims of war.
In EAST GARSTON the Local History Society is hosting an exhibition of First World War memorabilia in All Saints Church.
Opening times are 11.30am to 4.30pm on Saturday and 10am to 4.30pm on Sunday.
Memorabilia includes photographs, medals, letters from commanding officers, atefacts from soldiers, diary excerpts, a nurse’s scrapbook with photos, words from wounded soldiers and more.
HAM will commemorate its First World War dead with a special exhibition.
A Village Remembers is open to the public in the village hall on Saturday from 10am to 4.30pm, and on Sunday from 12pm to 4.30pm.
Six men from the village’s farming community were killed in the war and the exhibition is first and foremost to remember them.
However, it has been widened to include others from Ham who took part in the war or who were ancestors of those who now live in Ham.
One of the organisers, Robin Buchanan-Dunlop, said: “This has produced an eclectic mix of people who were involved in the war, some of them with prominent roles in it.”
In total, 36 men and women are profiled.
They include:
* Cpt Albert Ball, Royal Flying Corps, a national hero with a VC, DSO and two bars, and an MC
n Maj The Hon Maurice Baring, Royal Flying Corps, a distinguished man of letters who became personal staff officer to General Sir David Henderson, first commander of the RFC in the field, and then Major General (later Lord) Trenchard
* Lt Col Frederick Brereton, Royal Army Medical Corps, who was a prolific writer of boys adventure stories in the manner of GA Henty, and also participated in writing the definitive history of the RAMC in the war
* Maj Archibald Buchanan-Dunlop who became a leading light in the Christmas Truce of 1914; Lt Col Mark Davenport, Royal Army Medical Corps, who drew lots to be repatriated having been taken prisoner by the Germans
* Cmdr John Porte, Royal Naval Air Service, who was involved in naval air tactics and what would become the first aircraft carriers
* Maj Ralph Partridge, MC and bar, later a member of the Bloomsbury Group, who lived at Ham Spray House. He married the artist Dora Carrington
* Sir Eustace Tennyson d’Eyncourt, director of Naval Construction Royal Navy, who also designed the first battle tanks and Lt Henry Tonks, the famous war artist, particularly known for painting before-and-after illustrations of the work of one of the pioneers of plastic surgery treating facial wounds in the war.
The exhibition is open to the public on Saturday, November 10, from 10am to 4.30pm, and on Sunday, November 11, from noon to 4.30pm.
