Each year around June the wild poppy fields come into bloom around Priory Park, Hitchin. Synonymous with remembrance for all those who have fallen in conflict, military and civilian.

 

Western Europe 1914-18 in the trenches and blasted French countryside lay dead and injured servicemen. The resilient bright red Flanders poppy flourished in the middle of this chaos. In Spring 1915, Ypres, a Canadian doctor, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae moved by the sight of these poppies wrote the famous poem 'In Flanders Fields'

 

In Flanders' fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders' fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders' Fields.