Parish surpasses ambitions with Remembrance display of more than 17,000 poppies

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A CAMPAIGN by two parishioners of St Peter’s, Petersfield, to knit enough poppies to decorate the church porch evolved into a community-wide initiative that produced more than 17,000 poppies.

The Vicar of Petersfield and Rector of Buriton, Canon Will Hughes, told the Church Times this week that the two women, Christine Rushton and Rosemary Roberts, had last year been inspired by “The Longest Yarn”, a touring exhibition of knitted wartime memories, which had reached the Royal Garrison Church of All Saints, Aldershot.

They set an ambitious target of producing 6000 poppies, Canon Hughes said, and, by June, this had been exceeded. The new target was 12,000 poppies. “Knitting groups across the community started to come together, and poppies began to be sent in from across the community, the country, and even some from New Zealand. Children’s workshops in the summer holiday added paper poppies, including purple and white.”

Local builders’ merchants donated materials to make the frames to display the poppies, and a Christmas-tree farm donated the scaffolding needed to erect them. “The frames were in the church through October, and scores of volunteers came to tie poppies on,” Canon Hughes said. “We stopped counting at 17,000 poppies.

“The whole porch is covered, as are the gates, and inside there is a huge waterfall of poppies, while every windowsill has drifts of them. I even have a poppy stole.”

The poppies were the backdrop to the civic Act of Remembrance in the town square, and the Sunday sermon, he said, was based on “the uniqueness of each poppy within the sea of red. Attendance was huge, and afterwards a queue formed across the town square to come in and see the poppies. Now, the church is always full of people and school groups coming to see, and to try to spot, the ones they knitted.”

The display, which went up in October, is due to be taken down this weekend. A local funeral director has agreed to store the display for next year.

A “gentle ministry of knitting and talking has taken root”, Canon Hughes said. “Some meet to knit in the community café, which now has 80 to 100 guests each week.”