Thankful Villages

Upper Slaughter, a twice-Thankful Village

Thankful Villages (also known as Blessed Villages) are those few villages in Britain to which suffered no casualties in the First World War.

Throughout the land, in almost every village is a war memorial recaording and honouring the fallen of the Great War, but these few villages saw all their young men return. The term "Thankful Village" was popularised by the writer Arthur Mee in the 1930s. In Enchanted Land (1936), the introductory volume to The King’s England series of guides, he wrote that a Thankful Village was one which had lost no men in the Great War because all those who left to serve came home again. His initial list identified 32 villages.

In a November 2012 update researchers have identified 51 villages in England and Wales from which all soldiers returned. None has been identified amongst the shires of Northern Ireland nor Scotland.

Of these villages, some may be accounted twice-thankful, for losing none of their sons in the First or Second World Wars. From Upper Slaughter in Gloucestershire in the Great War, 1914-1918, twenty-four men and one woman went to fight and all returned and then in the Second World War 1939-1945, thirty-six villagers went to war and all returned.

Doubly thankful villages are marked with an asterisk:

Buckinghamshire Stoke Hammond Cardiganshire Llanfihangel y Creuddyn Cornwall Herodsfoot* Cumberland Ousby Derbyshire Bradbourne Dorset Langton Herring* Durham Hunstanworth Essex Strethall Glamorgan Colwinston Gloucestershire Coln Rogers Little Sodbury Upper Slaughter* Herefordshire Knill Middleton-on-the-Hill*

Hertfordshire Puttenham Kent Knowlton Lancashire Arkholme* Nether Kellet* Leicestershire East Norton Saxby Stretton en le Field Lincolnshire Bigby Flixborough* High Toynton* Minting Northamptonshire East Carlton Woodend Northumberland Meldon Nottinghamshire Cromwell Maplebeck Wigsley Wysall Pembrokeshire Herbrandston*

Rutland Teigh Shropshire Harley Somerset Aisholt Chantry Chelwood Holywell Lake Rodney Stoke Shapwick Stocklinch* Tellisford Woolley* Suffolk Culpho South Elmham St Michael* Sussex East Wittering Yorkshire Catwick* Cundall Helperthorpe Norton-le-Clay Scruton

A similar exercise of research was done in France, which was the battlefield itself and where the human cost of war was higher than for Britain. In the whole of France only one village, Thierville, lost no men in the First World War and thus had no memorials constructed in the subsequent period. Remarkably, the men of the village of Thierville were spared too in the Second World War and had lost none either in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.

References

• Thankful Villages – Hellfire Corner