‘Doubly thankful’ status marked
A MOORLANDS village unveiled a doubly thankful sign on the entrance to the community on Remembrance Sunday.
Butterton is the only village in Staffordshire that saw all its men return from both World Wars, which now allows it to be named a ‘Doubly Thankful’ village.
The unveiling formed part of a day of proceedings in the community on Sunday.
Events began in the morning with a service in St Bartholomew’s Church to commemorate ‘Remembrance and Thankfulness’ where BBC Radio Stoke transmitted the service live.
Afterwards, members of the community walked to the entrance of the village, on the Butterton Moor side, to unveil the sign.
Welcoming people to the ceremony, chairman of Butterton Parish Council, Karen Salt, said: “I would like to thank you for coming to this ceremony in order to dedicate and officially unveil our Doubly Thankful Village sign.
“A while ago Butterton History group expressed a wish to have this sign as they wanted to celebrate the fact that Butterton is the only Doubly Thankful Village in Staffordshire.
“The parish council approached Ruth Wilson, the community engagement officer for Support Staffordshire, for her assistance and possible help with funding, which today has led to shared funding for this sign.
“We would like to thank Ironage Design from Leek for working with us to produce this wonderful sign.”
Reverend Alan Beahan then dedicated the new sign with a prayer before the sign was unveiled by Butterton Wakes Queen, Jessica Fox.
Jessica, 13, said: “I was proud to unveil the new sign. It is nice for Butterton to remember the soldiers who all came back to the village from the world wars.”
Chairman of Butterton History Group, Maggie Risby, said they had been working on the project for four years.
She said: “As soon as we found out we were a doubly thankful village we began working to get a sign erected. The parish council has been very helpful.
“It is great to see it erected. It has created a lot of interest and we were featured on BBC Midlands Today last week.”
In the afternoon the church had a three hour peal of the recently erected bells. Pictures by Laura Mellor