Poppies and corn wreath

A “Thankful Village” is one where, at the end of the war, all its men returned alive. It is a term coined by Arthur Mee, the Bill Bryson of his day, in The King’s England series of 1936.He identified 32 of these villages, a number which has been increased to 53 after further research. To put it in context, there are  43,452 towns and villages in the UK. There would have been slightly more in the Great War because Ireland was still part of the UK until 1922. There are 50 in England, 3 in Wales and none have yet been identified in either Scotland or Ireland.

The village of Knowlton is one of these villages. Some villages are doubly thankful because they also lost nobody in WW2. Knowlton isn’t one of those, but it does have another distinction – Britain’s Bravest Village. The Weekly Dispatch newspaper held a competition in 1914 to recognise excellence in recruiting. The measure of bravery was to see how many volunteered for war service compared to the number of inhabitants, and the cut-off date was  28 February 1915. Twelve men joined up from a population of 39. When the result was announced there were complaints – mainly based on claims that most of the twelve, although they worked for the estate of Knowlton Court, were not actually residents.

Poppies at MENCAP Gardens

The village of Shillingstone, in Dorset, claims that its vicar objected, on the grounds that Knolton is only a hamlet, and that Shillingstone as runner-up, was then elevated to winner. The problem with this story is that Shillingstone wasn’t the runner-up, that was a village in Scotland called Mennock. Of course, Mennock is also a hamlet (a settlement without a church) so maybe Shillingstone objected to them too. But Shillingstone weren’t third either, that was the Orkney Islands, also in Scotland. It’s all looking a bit unreliable as a story. Anyway, Knowsley’s prize was a war memorial, which is ironic as they had no casualties to put on it. They took the course that was followed by several other places, of adding the names of the survivors.

The memorial is by George Frampton, noted sculptor, probably best known for his Peter Pan statue, or the Edith Cavell memorial.

If you look at the Mennock picture closely, you will see  a row of poppies in the foreground just like the ones we made on the farm, using the bottoms of pop bottles. THis was what prompted my selection of photos for the post. Strangely, although Mennock appears to have an Aberdeen granite war memorial by Frampton, the actual prize offered was either a Roll of Honour or a bronze medallion, according to different newspaper reports. There were several similar competitions on a local basis.

Considering that I’d never heard of the competition before I started to research an In Memorium card, I have manged to make a blog post out of it, and am likely to do more digging as it’s an interesting subject. I have just found the rules in the paper – it does state villages, but makes it clear that no borough and no place over 5,000 in population can enter. People don’t always differentiate between villages and hamlets, but it’s clearly a competition for smaller places.

Poppies and Rosemary in MENCAP gardens.