Thankful Villages Explained

Thankful Villages (also known as Blessed Villages;)^{[1] [2]} are settlements in England and Wales from which all their members of the armed forces survived World War I. 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 war because all those who left to serve came home again. His initial list identified 32 villages. There are tens of thousands of villages and towns in the United Kingdom.

In an October 2013 update,^[3] researchers identified 53 civil parishes in England and Wales from which all serving personnel returned. There are no Thankful Villages identified in Scotland or Ireland yet (all of Ireland was then part of the United Kingdom).

Fourteen of the English and Welsh villages are considered "doubly thankful", in that they also lost no service personnel during World War II.^[4] These are marked in italics in the list below (note: while the list includes 17 of these, not all have been verified).

List of Thankful Villages

The researchers acknowledged a number of other villages which have been put forward as Thankful Villages but where they found there to be some uncertainty, generally over the place of residence of a serviceman.^[3]

England

Buckinghamshire

• Stoke Hammond

Cambridgeshire

• Toft

Cornwall

• Herodsfoot

Cumberland

• Ousby

Derbyshire

• Bradbourne

Dorset

• Langton Herring

Durham

• Hunstanworth

Essex

• Strethall

Gloucestershire

• Coln Rogers
• Little Sodbury
• Upper Slaughter

Herefordshire

• Knill
• Middleton-on-the-Hill

Hertfordshire

• Puttenham

Kent

• Knowlton

Lancashire

• Arkholme
• Nether Kellet

Leicestershire

• Saxby
• East Norton
• Stretton en le Field

Lincolnshire

• Bigby
• Flixborough
• High Toynton
• Minting
• Allington^[5]

Northamptonshire

• East Carlton
• Woodend

Northumberland

• Meldon

Nottinghamshire

• Cromwell
• Maplebeck
• Wigsley
• Wysall

Rutland

• Teigh

Shropshire

• Harley

Somerset

• Aisholt
• Chantry
• Chelwood
• Holywell Lake
• Rodney Stoke
• Shapwick
• Stocklinch
• Tellisford
• Woolley

Staffordshire

• Butterton

Suffolk

• Culpho
• Wordwell
• South Elmham St Michael

Sussex

• East Wittering

Yorkshire

• Catwick
• Cundall
• Helperthorpe
• Norton-le-Clay
• Scruton

Wales

Ceredigion

• Llanfihangel y Creuddyn^[6]

Glamorgan

• Colwinston/Tregolwyn

Pembrokeshire

• Herbrandston

Tavernspite, in Pembrokeshire, has been mooted as a fourth doubly thankful village in Wales.^[7]

France

In France, where the human cost of war was higher than in Britain, there were only twelve villages in all of France with no men lost from World War I.^[8] One of these, Thierville, also suffered no losses in the Franco-Prussian War and World War II, France's other bloody wars of the modern era.^{[9] [10]}

In popular culture

Between 2016 and 2018, singer-songwriter Darren Hayman released a trilogy of albums inspired by and written in-situ at the Thankful Villages. 54 villages were covered, including Welbury, North Yorkshire, not in the 53 listed above.^{[11] [12]}

Notes and References

1. News: BBC News (in Welsh). Taith i gofio 'pentrefi diolchgar' (Tour in remembrance of "thankful villages"). 8 November 2018.
2. http://www.mearns.org/stcyrus/pdf/stcyrus1007.pdf St Cyrus – an example of the use of "Blessed Villages" in section 'St Cyrus War Memorial' of the St Cyrus Newsletter, October/ November 2007, at mearns.org/stcyrus
3. Web site: Norman Thorpe, Rod Morris and Tom Morgan. The Thankful Villages. Hellfire corner. 5 November 2013.
4. Web site: Thankful villages: The places where everyone came back from the wars . Jon . Kelly . BBC News . BBC News Magazine . 11 November 2011 . 12 November 2011.
5. Book: Pask . Brenda . Allington: The Story of a Lincolnshire Village . 1990 . B.M.Pask . 0951688804.
6. News: BBC News. 8 November 2018. Hume, Colette. Wales' two 'doubly thankful' villages. 8 November 2018.
7. News: Tenby Observer. 9 December 2011. Could Tavernspite be a "Thankful Village"?. 8 November 2018.
8. Grégory Bozonnet, La sécurité. La mémoire, Armand Colin, 2016, p. 87.
9. Jérôme Duhamel (Paris 1990). Grand Inventaire du Génie Français, p. 196: "Between 1919 and 1925, a war memorial was erected in every community in France, with one single exception: the village of Thierville in the department of the Eure, the only French village which had no dead to mourn, not in 1870, nor in 14–18, nor in 39–45" Also quoted in Thorpe, Morris and Morgan's "The Thankful Villages" referenced above.
10. News: BBC News. Kelly, Jon. 11 November 2011. Thankful villages: The places where everyone came back from the wars. 9 November 2018.
11. News: We Lucky Few. 16 July 2016. i (newspaper). 31 May 2016.
12. News: Petridis. Alexis. Darren Hayman: No sleep till Upper Slaughter. 16 July 2016. The Guardian. 12 July 2016.