A DALE community spent months working on a project to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War armistice, with all age groups getting involved.
Residents in and around Ingleton, with the help of education co-ordinator at The Bowes Museum Julia Dunn, have created a commemorative canvas which will be the centrepiece of the village’s commemoration events.
The canvas, which depicts French fields in the foreground with the Battle of the Somme in the background, will go on show at the village hall on Sunday, November 11. Two wet felt workshops were run in September and October for children from Ingleton Primary School and adult villagers and they produced a number of poppies which will adorn the canvas.
Sandra Parrett, who has been helping to organise the canvas said: “The children and the village grown-ups had great fun making the wet felt poppies.”
The village’s centenary armistice event will take place in the village hall on Sunday, November 11, from 11.45am.
Refreshments and home-made cakes will be on offer during the event, when Dalesider’s folk group will play music from the era. Children and villagers will recite poetry from some of the Great War’s soldier poets.
It is also intended to screen the new Peter Jackson documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, together with Andrew Motion reading his new poem, Armistice.
Ms Parrett added: “Statistics which remind us all of the great sacrifice which was made by all our young men, women, horses, mules and donkeys, will be read out. We will commemorate our own villagers whose names appear on the roll of honour in St John’s Church. Those names will be placed around the walls of the village hall.”
She added: “Everyone is welcome to come and share the occasion with us. This is a day not only joyous, as it signalled the ending of the harshest of hostilities, but is spiritual and thought-provoking and we are particularly keen that people feel free to make their own contribution.”
