Last week there was a service of remembrance for Dr Milward Cecil Hayward – one of the men from Abingdon who died 100 years ago in World War I.

The Grandchildren of Dr Hayward organised the service at St Nicolas Church, with the help of Revd. Paul Smith, and relatives came from far and wide for the event.

Dr Hayward is the founder of the Abingdon Surgery, having set up a practise at 65 Stert Street in 1902.

He volunteered at the start of the Great War, and so left the practise, to join the 3rd Home Counties Field Ambulance . On 11th May 1915, he was hit by a shell on the Menin Road, Ypres, causing damage to his spine and lungs. He subsequently died of pneumonia on August 23rd 1916, and is buried at Abingdon Spring Road Cemetery. The epitaph on his grave has the words of Jesus “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”