For those of you following the wonderful plan to cover the tower of St Mary’s Church in Wotton-under-Edge with poppies, here’s the latest update:
Plans to cover the tower received a boost when a structural engineer proposed plans for hanging thousands of flowers. The proposed system uses scaffolding for suspending nets covered in fabric, wool and plastic poppies on the tower.
“We need to buy some netting on which we will attach the poppies, so any donations would be gratefully received,” said organiser Kate Cropper.
“At the moment we’re doing some tests – we are trying cricket netting, covering it with poppies, getting them wet and weighing it all so we can work out the tear strength, so we know how much to put on each scaffolding pole so it is safe.
“If there are any trawler fishermen with nets they no longer need we’ll gladly take them!” said Kate.
Donations of poppies continue to flood in from around the world: “We were sent 250 poppies from a group in Australia who had seen the appeal on justhands-on.tv. They had crocheted the poppies for their Anzac Day service and then sent them to us.
“We will make a special display of them inside the church with background information on where they came from,” she added.
The grand total of poppies is yet to be confirmed, but the current estimate is around 5,000. Numbers will rise as groups and individuals continue to knit, and the primary schools in the town will start making felt poppies when they return after the summer holiday.
The cut-off date for poppy donations has been set as the end of September to give volunteers time to attach them all to the netting – an engineering challenge in its own right.
“We are going to sew the poppies to the nets as we need to keep everything as light as possible,” Kate explained.
Take a look at the video below to see how the church is coming along
