GARSTANG TOWN COUNCIL Remembrance Sunday 14th Nov 2021: A Time for Remembrance and Reflection
At 11:30am the mayor invited the assembly to Garstang Arts Centre for light refreshments and the RBL extended a warm welcome to their club on the High Street. We would like to thank the Garstang Lions and other volunteers for ensuring the parade was kept safe by implementing the road closures and providing safety marshals along the route.
It was an early start for our parade marshal, Lee Dickinson who was accompanied by Cllr Alan Pearson on a walk of the parade route at 8:00am checking and signing off the risk assessment. At 8:45am Pilling Jubilee Silver Band and the parading organisations started assembling at High Street car park. We were blessed with a very mild sunny day. At 9:20am the parade was called to attention, the band played and at 9:25am we marched off along the High Street to St Thomas’s Church.
A tremendous amount of work went into planning the event and the mayor is grateful to his project team drawn from the Royal British Legion, the Armed Forces & Veterans Breakfast Club, the Garstang Lions, Churchwardens and the town council including the town clerk. Our grateful thanks to The Pilling Jubilee Silver Band who performed an excellent repertoire of poignant music, the ladies at the Arts Centre for providing the refreshments and to our photographer, Michael Coleran
We were very honoured to have the Right Reverend Bishop Julian of Blackburn leading our church service of remembrance and a time for reflection. At 10:40am the parade assembled again and marched off along Park Hill Road to the War Memorial where our Act of Remembrance was again led by the Bishop of Blackburn. By 10:50am a large crowd had gathered around the war memorial to pay their respects to the men who had fallen in both world wars and in Afghanistan. After the 11:00am two minutes of silence we called forward 33 local organisations to lay wreaths at the memorial. The names of the fallen from the first world war were read out by the mayor of Garstang and those from the second world war and Afghanistan by the chairman of the Royal British Legion.
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