Category: Community

Poems and a report from Year 9 students who recently visited the battlefields of Flanders and France.

Early one morning in October, 43 Year 9 students from Kibworth High School set off to visit the First World War battlefields of Belgium and France. The students, having studied the causes of the war and the experience of soldiers in the trenches, felt both excitement and trepidation. They were accompanied by expert Martin Featherstone to give a former soldier’s perspective on the conflict.

I was searching through some First World War records recently when I came across Kibworth’s own champion, Brigadier General James Lockhead Jack - known to us locally as ‘General Jack’ - of the Old House, Main Street, Kibworth Harcourt.

Kendall Sassoon is the only remaining grandchild of the poet and writer Siegfried Sassoon. The first thing she shows us is a silver replica of his gold Poetry Medal; the original she has given to the Caernarvon Museum of the Royal Welch Fusiliers to sit beside his pistol. As she says, ‘love versus war’.

Inspired by a poem by an unknown soldier, Derby-based ceramic artist Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper have created an artwork at the Tower of London to commemorate the outbreak of the Great War one hundred years ago. By 11 November 2014, 888,246 ceramic poppies will fill the entire moat, each of which will represent an individual serviceman or woman who died during the conflict.

Burton Overy has done much work to research the backgrounds of the eight war dead who are remembered on the war memorial in the village church. At a church service on Sunday 3 August, their stories were told and Hayley Welby - great granddaughter of John Cox, who is buried in a commonwealth war grave in the churchyard - read his poignant story.

In 1911, the Kibworths and Smeeton Westerby were home to some 2000 people. Other villages were smaller: Foxton, for instance, had 324 inhabitants and Tur Langton, 237.