Thankful

Stopped off in Knill to look at the stained glass in the church this morning. Knill is a small village on the Herefordshire/Radnorshire border. It is one of the so-called 'Thankful' villages. These are parishes where all who served overseas in the First World War returned alive. There are only 52 such parishes in England (out of more than 12,500). Knill is even more remarkable because it is one of the 14 'Doubly Thankful' villages, those that also lost no serving personnel in the Second World War. The village has no war memorial but a stone tablet in the church records thanks for the safe return home of all its men. I was going to blip the commemorative tablet but, instead, my blip today is of one of the timber framed houses on the road opposite the church. Despite grey clouds overhead foreshadowing showers to come, it is a wonderfully peaceful place and I imagine little changed (apart from the satellite dish) from the view that would have greeted those coming home more than a hundred years ago.