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Memories are controversial. They also change over time. Could that explain why one Devon village has so many memorials of World War One?

In 1920, the village of Northlew chose to remember its fallen soldiers with a village hall; Northlew Victory Hall. They wanted a memorial which would be useful. So, the village actively chose not to have a stone cross.

But in 1996, the village’s World War Two veterans (members of the local British Legion) erected a stone cross memorial to Northlew’s soldiers of World War One – 78 years after the end of the conflict.

In 2014, the village created its own poppy (the Northlew poppy), has distributed it through the Church of England to local schools and aims to make the world’s longest war memorial. Planted in the hedgerows of Devon, the village intends its Poppy Avenue to stretch over 10 miles with over 2 million poppies. The avenue concept is in two parts – one following a road in a direct line to Flanders, the other towards the train station which took its young men to war.

The village of Northlew claims to have lost proportionately more young men from the enlisted population than any other town city or place in the UK (22 of 100). But some men on its memorial weren’t born in the village, and others didn’t live in Northlew either. However, the complications of memory make measuring the dead difficult and uncomfortable for the living.

Location: Northlew, Devon EX20 3NQ
Image shows the memorial in Northlew

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