Villagers hand-craft 8,000 poppies for West Sussex Remembrance display
Residents across five West Sussex villages have completed a monumental community art project, creating a display of more than 8,200 hand-crafted poppies to mark Remembrance 2026.
The installation, which cascades down the medieval tower of St Mary’s Church in Slaugham, features five distinct red swathes - each representing one of the villages comprising West Weald Parish.
Over the past several months, 85 residents across all five parish villages gathered for ‘coffees and poppies’, ‘pub and poppies’ and ‘poppies and prosecco’ to knit, crochet, and sew together. From school pupils picking up needles for the first time to 90-year-old village veterans.
The installation serves as a memorial to the 111 service members from the parish who died during the First and Second World Wars. Ahead of Remembrance Sunday, individual wooden crosses bearing each man's name will be placed at the base of the tower.
Carol Pickering, ALM in Rural Ministry, "It has been an enormous privilege to bring together such a huge number of people of all ages across all the villages. It doesn’t matter if someone has made one poppy or a thousand, sewn on one centre or sewn poppies onto the swathe – every person matters and every contribution matters!"
"We are grateful to Sussex Community Foundation and Transparency Cleaning Services for their support with the project and if you would like to support the Royal British Legion you can do on our Just Giving page."