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For King and Country: Blackmore During the First World War (Part 1): Introduction

By Andrew Smith

For King and Country: Remembering Blackmore in the First World War

In the early 1960s, my wife’s grandfather, Alexander Bartram lived in Spring Pond Meadow in Hook End.

He had a house built on his land and dug the footings himself. The Planning Inspector from Epping and Ongar Rural District Council commended him for the quality of his work.

There was a reason for this he told the official. He had dug trenches during the First World War.

This anecdote is illustrative of the family connections many of us have with the First World War, whose centenary of its ending we commemorate this weekend.

On Sunday at 11am many will stand before the Parish War Memorial to observe two minutes’ silence on which are carved the names of 21 men who died and a further 81 men from Blackmore who served and returned.

This will be the one hundredth year that two minutes’ silence is observed at that hour.

The Parish War Memorial

The inclusion of survivors on a War Memorial is unusual. In early 1920 the Bishop of Chelmsford, John Edwin Watts-Ditchfield, made it known that he had strong views that only those who had died should be included on Church Memorials.

“To remember those who made the supreme sacrifice is natural, and corresponds to our inmost feeling. If once we go beyond these, it seems impossible to define any limit when so many, including women, girls and nurses, laboured equally with our gallant lads”.

Blackmore During the First World War

This evening’s talk is about the life and times of the people of Blackmore and the surrounding villages a hundred years ago.

On coming into church this evening, you will have seen a huge number of poppies draped over the building and extending across the churchyard.

It is inspired by the display in the Moat of the Tower of London in 2014. ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ commemorated the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, consisting of 888,246 ceramic red poppies each intended to represent one British or Colonial serviceman killed in the War.

The installation grew over the course of nearly four months with the final poppy placed on 11th November 2014.