Category Archives: peace

Exbourne Road Poppies, St Nicolas Church Poppies, and events over the weekend

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November 1918
Exbourne Road,  a street of 31 houses in Abingdon, has 18 large poppies on display. Each poppy in a front window represents men from that house who signed up to answer the call of duty during WWI.
November 1918
From one house, six men / lads signed up.

From this small street, 34 men signed up; six were never to return; eight were wounded; and the rest returned having been through the hardship and horror of war.
November 1918
A cascade of poppies, one for each of Abingdon’s fallen in WWI, falls from the beams of St Nicolas church in the marketplace.  The Abingdon Crochet group from Masons created the poppies to commemorate the sacrifice.

Events over the weekend include:

Abingdon Roll of Honour read by various people – St Helen’s Church
Saturday, 10 November 2018 – 9:30am

Civic Bun Throw – County Hall and Abingdon Market Place
Saturday, 10 November 2018 – 2:00pm

Remembrance Concert – Abingdon Town Band – St Helen’s Church
Saturday, 10th November, 7:30pm-9:30pm

Remembrance Day Service – St Helen’s Church and Abingdon War Memorial
Sunday, 11th November, 10:00am-11:15am

Ringing out for peace – Abingdon Market Place
Sunday, 11th November, 7.00 pm

Beacon Lighting – County Hall
Sunday, 11th November, 7:00pm-8:00pm

Shop Windows Displays in Abingdon remember November 1918

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A lot of the shop windows in Abingdon town centre have poppies and WWI displays as we near the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI on November 11th 2018.
November 1918
Gemini Hair and Robert Stanley Opticians  are displaying large poppies.
November 1918
Fat Face has the Abingdon WWI Roll of Honour, showing men from Bridge Street who served together with pictures of them and their families.
November 1918
The Abingdon Flower Club has a double display in the Community Free Space. On one side are poppies and military symbols;
November 1918
and on the other side is a reminder of the women’s suffrage movement, that led to women over the age of 30 who owned property getting the vote in 1918, together with all men over the age of 21.

Hiroshima Day

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Thankyou for Sally for this ..

The Abingdon Peace Group had our usual vigil at the War Memorial from 7.45-8.15am, and were joined , as last year, by a young man who comes from Hiroshima and who in fact will be back there this week with his wife and son, visiting his family.

We also had a little ceremony in the Abbey Meadow in the afternoon to dedicate the Peace Tree, a Japanese cherry which we planted many years ago but which had to be replaced recently. We read a “postcard from Hiroshima” which reported on a 50-day pilgrimage taking place now, from the island of Okinawa to Hiroshima. We also heard a poem written by one of our members, Mavis Howard, after a visit to the Luneberger Heath and the death camp at Belsen, reflecting on the deaths there and in the firestorm at Dresden.

Postcard to Hiroshima

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Your Local Carpet Store
The anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima is today, August 6th, and the Abingdon Peace Group gathered, as they have done for many years now, for a 30-minute vigil at the War Memorial in Abingdon – at 8.15am this morning, the time the bomb was dropped.

They were joined by a man from Hiroshima, born their 42 years ago and now working at Harwell, who said it was very moving that people in Abingdon, so very far away, remember his home town in this way. That Hiroshima is a place where people work for peace and no more bombs, especially nuclear bombs.