A GROUP of Wyesham ladies have set themselves a task to help the Shire Hall celebrate the 100 years since the end of the First World War.

Poppies have been used quite spectacularly to adorn buildings, most recently the cathedral in Hereford and the 2014 ceramic poppy display at the Tower of London which drew crowds from all over the world.

Monmouth will be remembering the end of hostilities 100 years ago in a number of ways, one of them will be a poppy display at the Shire Hall.

A plea was launched in April by Aileen Atkinson of the Shire Hall for poppies to help decorate the building and the challenge was taken up by one Wyesham woman, Daphne Evans, who asked the ladies in her craft group if they would like to get involved and they decided to aim for a target of supplying 5,000 knitted and crocheted poppies.

So the craft group - a mixture of Wyesham WI and Wyesham church ladies - got their knitting needles out for the task.

One Osbaston woman, whose husband heard about this at his Parkinson’s group decided to help out and crocheted 2,000 poppies!

Rita Whitehall said that it took her about four minutes to do one poppy and once started, she just kept going and going: “I’ve run out of wool now”.

Daphne added: “With Rita’s 2,000 we will have done 3,000 so far so are well on our way to our target which we hope to complete by October!”

Aileen said that the Shire Hall team are absolutely thrilled with the response they have received to the Monmouth poppies campaign as part of the 100 year commemoration of the end of the First World War.

“We are receiving poppies from all over the UK and Rita’s contribution in particular is amazing.

“The aim is to get 5,000 poppies to create something spectacular for the front of the Shire Hall and we have around 4,000 already. We are incredibly grateful to everybody who has contributed so far – keep them coming!”