A spectacular poppy display has been unveiled draped down the side of a Swansea church, paying a special tribute to all those who lost their lives during conflict. It has been been created by Wise Women fellowship, a group of ladies who come together once a month to pray and spend time together as friends at Llangyfelach Church.
Every month, they do something important for a local charity, such as collecting vegetables for soup kitchens, or food for a food bank, or making a donation to Water Aid or Christian Aid. But with Remembrance Day coming up on November 11, they have gone above and beyond to create something uniquely special to show their respects.
Members of the group dedicated weeks of their time to producing the eye-catching tribute, which features around 3,000 poppies, some of which were even sent from Australia. It also features some purple poppies to remember animals killed during the war. Get Swansea stories straight to your inbox with our newsletter.
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Reverend of Llangyfelach Church, Anthony Porter, said: "The idea came about through a fellowship group we set up called Wise Women of Llangyfelach. A lot of our ladies who come to church were isolated during Covid so the group came from that and it has been growing ever since. They suggested we should do some sort of large display in memory of the fallen soldiers of the war. We were Googling ideas of what we could come up with and many of us saw another church that had done an arrangement of poppies that resembled falling blood on their church so we thought we could do that here.
"So they got knitting and all of a sudden almost 3,000 poppies were created and hand-tied onto a fishing net. There's also some purple poppies amongst it too to demonstrate our remembrance for animals killed during the war. That was borne out of one of our parishioners who is very dedicated to animal rescue. Some of our ladies have friends in Australia and churches across Australia helped knit some of the poppies and sent them across via air-mail. We spent about two weeks tying it all on, and it was yesterday we put the display out for everyone to see, and the feedback has been amazing.
"Everybody is saying what a wonderful tribute it is, and people are coming across to the church to take photos. It is a remembrance of the blood that was shed and how we as people today are living for their sacrifice, and then linking that to the sacrifice of Jesus. The tower is roughly about 12 metres - it is very large, and once we were wondering if it would cover the tower as it's so vast. There's a momentum now, we want to keep building on it for years to come."
Leader of Wise Women, Vireen Davies, said: "It's been quite an effort, over 3,000 poppies have gone into the display - they've come over from Australia, from everywhere. We didn't realise how far it would go. They have been sponsoring it and all money will be going to the Royal British Legion."
Wise Women member, Ruth Evans added: "We are a crowd of 15 ladies and we all knitted like mad, and people from Australia took part and sent hundreds over. Another friend of ours was absolutely wonderful and did 850 on her own. It was so thrilling when our vicar threw it over the terrace and it just rolled down. It was an absolutely wonderful sight to see."
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