World-class poppy display back in Ripon
Over 75,000 crocheted poppies have been hung across the city
Ripon's world-class poppy display is back with over 75 thousand hand crafted flowers hung across the city.
An army of volunteers have spent hours knitting and hanging the poppies from the Spa Gardens to Grantley Hall.
What started as a one-off to honour the centenary of World War One has turned into a yearly tradition with hand-crafted poppies shipped in from all corners of the world.
Dozens of residents have spent hours hanging them, including one of the organisers Hazel Barker.
She said: "We have a little knitting group on a Monday morning which started the project and through covid they've been knitting poppies. We've been dropping bags of wool off and picking up bags filled with the finished poppies and it's just kept people going. It was something for them to do which had a purpose.
"In previous years we've had poppies sent from all over the world because they heard about how big of a project it was from the first time around. We had somebody down the other day from Lockerbie in Scotland and they said they hadn't seen anything like it.
"Well we hadn't even finished half of it by then so if they came back to see it now it would look a hell of a lot different! People all around the world are still interested in it and come down to see it."
Cllr Stuart Martin, former Mayor of Harrogate, is also behind the project. He said: "It only ever started as a project which was going to go from the Spa Gardens to the Cathedral but it just took off and we got more poppies than we knew what to do with.
"So we just kept on putting displays together and it's now gone all over Ripon all the way to Grantley Hall. We didn't envisage it was going to go this big and it really is a testament to the community of Ripon. There are an awful lot of people doing their bit behind the scenes and we couldn't pull it off without their support."
As well as the poppy display, a silhouette of soldiers, that originally formed part of Ripon's centenary of armistice commemorations in 2018, have been relocated to Hell Wath.
The sculpture was temporarily located in St John’s Church grounds in Sharow but have been relocated to Hell Wath in Ripon thanks to the support from Harrogate Borough Council, Ripon Community Poppy Project, Fields of Mud, Seeds of Hope, Econ Engineering, Tarmac, Ripon Farm Services, Friends of Hell Wath and 21 Engineer Regiment from Claro barracks.
At its height, Ripon hosted more than 30,000 soldiers.
Each silhouette tells its own individual story. Fred leading his horse Bones back home from the war is based on a piece of silverware belonging to the Royal Lancers called 'Fed up and far from home'.