ARMISTICE DAY
In 1918 the Armistice brought the terrible conflict of the First World War to an end – at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month. In 1921 the Government decided that the fallen should be commemorated on this date every year, to be known as Armistice Day.
It is now hold on the nearest Sunday and is still commemorated in every village and town throughout the United Kingdom, including of course Richmond.
Every parish in our Borough of Richmond has service of commemoration at a memorial with the names of those who have fallen, such as the Old Town Hall and on Kew Green. The service by the Old Town Hall is followed by a march past with the salute taken by the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Richmond or the Mayor of Richmond and the parade includes a number of veterans. At St, Anne’s Church, Kew, the service of commemoration takes place by the War Memorial on Kew Green and after the two minutes silence, a bugler plays the Last Post.
These two events echo the national ceremony at the Cenotaph, where the Monarch lays the first wreath. Sir Edwin Lutyens designed the Cenotaph. The word Cenotaph is based on the Greek word kenotaphion, meaning empty tomb, following the ancient Greek tradition of a memorial for someone killed in battle, but whose body was never found. Lutyens described the plinth as ‘an empty tomb uplifted on a high pedestal’.
Richmond’s long-standing contribution has been the manufacturing of poppies in the Poppy factory. The First World War had left many survivors permanently disabled and out of work. In 1922 Major George Howson MC, who had founded the Disabled Society, set up a small factory in the Old Kent Road with a loan of £2,000 from the British Legion to make poppies, with just five disabled ex-servicemen. Soon they were employing 60. Ten years later they moved into a disused brewery in Petersham Road, Richmond, and in the following year the present factory was built on adjacent land. This factory still operates today and is now run by the Royal British Legion. It employs 40 full-time workers, most of whom are disabled, plus a further 90 who work from home. They make 36 million poppies a year, 80,000 poppy wreaths and the wooden crosses for the Garden of Remembrance in Whitehall. The money raised is used to help disabled service men and women and their families.
Find more local history stories here.