People have been working hard putting together an exhibition of people who served in WW1, alongside the 1914-18 Roll of Service. It is in the Community Shop, Bury Street. Some displays are are of families like the Hudsons …
and the Kings…
Other displays are of people by street. There is: East St Helen Street, West St Helen Street, Ock Street, The Vineyard etc.
This is mostly thanks to Elizabeth Drury and Jackie Hudson and the Library, but also thanks to people who have donated pictures.
The exhibition will be open next week from Monday to Friday 10-4. Then some of it will move back to the Library. This has been arranged as part of Heritage Open Days which is next weekend.
By the way the Vintage Music Fair, with the gold fly posters, has been organised completely independently of Heritage Open Days. The people organising it were told that Heritage Open Weekend was a busy weekend in Abingdon and decided to try staging an event at the same time. Hopefully it will mean there is something to please everybody.
I saw yesterday that many houses in East St Helens Street have notices in their windows with information from the “Roll of Honour” about people living in that house who served in WW1. This seems a very fitting commemoration. If people living in other pre-1914 streets want to find out about their predecessors 100 years ago, they can look online at the Roll of Honour http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Databases/Abingdon/ or call in to the Community Shop Exhibition next week or the Library Local History section any time.
In remembrance let’s remember all those self-centred politicians who sent other peoples’ children to foreign parts to kill and be killed. I would, particularly, point this out to Nicola and ask her to break ranks, for once, and not vote with the party and for her career to gain ‘Call Me Dave’ a few Brownie Points with the Amerikan neocons.
Every time I watch the soldiers march through Abingdon I think how young and innocent they look… so much life to come that could be snuffed-out on a politicians whim. So many mothers’ dreams destroyed while politicians posture …
My grandad came back from WWI with a bullet in his chest that they didn’t know how to take out at the time (he was a shot-firer down The Pit) and my dad, when pressed to tell the story, could never get passed the part when he heard his mate screaming while he cooked to death in a lorry in Normandy.
Stick your chin out call-me-dave and you wouldn’t look like Churchill through a long-range lens. And, Nicola … you’re no Thatcher-clone … just a young toe-the-line chancer.
A plague on all politicians.
Nice exhibition ……. better than the museum!
I will be collecting for SSAFA this Saturday along with two RAF colleagues in the market square, please come and give generously.
A number of politicians watched brothers and sons go off to the massacre and never saw them return. War is a dreadful thing and we should always protest at its cost.
My father was a non-combatant in WW2; his brother fought. Both acted out of conviction. Who was right?
i don’t know, but I honour them both – and all those who have died or been injured in war and those who have carried their loss in their hearts.
War it a tragedy – but as long as we are as we are, it seems to be inescapable.
I shan’t be buying a poppy for party political reasons but because of the human tragedy (and politicians are fallible human beings like the rest of us).
“I shan’t be buying a poppy for party political reasons but because of the human tragedy (and politicians are fallible human beings like the rest of us).”
That’s a shame you’ve chosen not to support the British Legion, nor to recognise the sacrifice given by so many.
Steve, i think that you have misread what I wrote.
I did not say that I would not be buying a poppy; I said that I would not be buying one for party political reasons – rather I would be buying a poppy because of the human tragedy of war.
One of the costs of war is not simply that combatants are killed and injured but that non-combatants are too. In WW2 the ratio of deaths (civilians to military) was two to one.
War is terrible; of course I shall be wearing a poppy – and I am shortly off to the Tower of London to see the ceramic poppy art installation in remembrance of WW1.
Thanks ppjs, in June this year my wife and I did a tour of the WW1 battlefields in our old car, we started at Ypres, then drove through Passchendaele and down to Albert in the Somme stopping of at the Royal Berkshire regiments memorial “Hyde park Corner” where we laid a wreath on behalf of the mayor, Angela Lawrence and it is not until you do the trip do you realise that WW1 was nothing but carnage on an industrial scale, we all need to realise and appreciate what our relatives gave for us. Abingdon sent around 320 men (and boys) to fight with the Royal Berkshire regiment alone, of those 120 were wounded and 86 died. Just dreadful !
I see that Euan Blair is to go into the trenches to fight for the safe Labour seat of Bootle and carry the baton of daddy’s legacy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tony-blairs-eldest-son-euan-in-the-frame-for-safe-labour-seat-in-bootle-9254905.html
Not even the people of Liverpool deserve this circus ….
… actually, I know some nice Scousers, even Iain claims to be a Scouser, though I don’t think he can be a proper one, but he’s a nice enough fellla and a human being despite his misguided efforts re. the Guildhall Cinema.
…interesting though this is, Newcomer, what is it to do with Abingdon?
Quite, Hester, what would war have to do with politics anywhere on The Planet?
SSAFA was the only national military charity at the start of WW1. The Royal British Legion was formed after the war in 1921.
SSAFA did a lot of good work – you can find out more on Saturday – and looked after the families before we had the welfare state and played a major part in pensions for servicemen.
I am proud that SSAFA has been chosen as the charity on Saturday as I know that all the money raised will help the serving and ex-serving men and women and their families in Abingdon and the Vale.
We will also have soldiers helping from Dalton Barracks.
Monica Lovatt SSAFA Divisional Secretary Vale of White Horse.
I was very glad to accept to Steve’s kind offer to lay a wreath on behalf of the mayor and town council in remembrance of those from Abingdon who gave their lives.
It was very moving to listen to all the names being read out in St Helen’s church on August 4th, sometimes several from one house, truly awful.