Men and women who have given their lives in the service of their country will be honoured across Wandsworth this Remembrance Sunday and on next week's Armistice Day.

There will be three Remembrance Day services in the borough on Sunday, November 8. These will be at St Mary's Church, Putney Bridge, Holy Trinity Church, Ponsonby Road, Roehampton, and also at St Mary’s Church in Battersea Church Road,

The Putney and Battersea ceremonies will involve local dignitaries and ex-servicemen laying wreaths at their war memorials and parades involving veterans and representatives from the Royal British Legion, Burma Star Association, Royal Naval Association, army, air force and sea cadets and the Scout Movement, as well as current servicemen and women.

These services will commence at 10.45am and at 11am a two minute silence will be observed in memory of the fallen. The Deputy Mayor Cllr Jane Cooper will attend the Putney service while the Mayor of Wandsworth Cllr Prof Brian Prichard will attend the Battersea.

In Putney the parade will pass along Putney High Street and into the Upper Richmond Road, where the salute will be at Wandsworth County Court. In Roehampton, the service at Holy Trinity will commence at 10am and just before 11am wreaths will be laid at the war memorial on Roehampton Heath, at the top of Medfield Street.

This little-known war memorial, which stands on land managed by the Wimbledon and Putney Commons Conservators, honours the men of Roehampton who fought and died in the First World War. In recent years its carved stonework had become stained and tarnished by the elements – but in time for last year's ceremony, it was cleaned up and brought back to its former glory thanks to the kind work of the council's street cleaning contractors Connaught.

• Two Armistice Day ceremonies will be held in the borough on Wednesday, November 11 to mark the 91st anniversary of the moment the guns fell silent at the end of hostilities in the First World War.

An annual service of remembrance will be held at the front gardens of Wandsworth Town Hall . A second service will be held at the same time in Battersea Park. Both services will commence at 10.45am and there will be a two minutes' silence at 11am to mark the time on November 11, 1918, that a ceasefire came into effect after four years of bitter fighting.

Attending the Battersea Park ceremony will be the Mayor as well as representatives of service organisations, other local dignitaries and private mourners, who will all lay wreaths. A bugler from the London Regiment will sound Last Post and Reveille and a piper from the regiment will play a Lament as the wreaths are laid.

This service will be at the park's War Memorial, located at the junction of Central Avenue and East Carriage Drive

The memorial was created by renowned war artist and sculptor Eric Kennington, who served as a private in the 13th London Regiment in Flanders and France before being wounded and sent home in June 1915. His stone memorial to the 24th Infantry Division was unveiled in Battersea Park in 1924. 

The town hall service will be in the garden fronting Wandsworth High Street where three stone memorial tablets commemorate the service and sacrifices made by local men and women who have served in the borough's volunteer armed forces since 1914.

A tablet was first laid here in 1965 to honour the memory of men of the 13th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment - the Wandsworth Pals battalion - who answered the Mayor of Wandsworth’s call to arms in 1915. Two others were added last year to honour those who have served in 16 locally-based territorial army units since the onset of the First World War.

While the town hall ceremony is aimed chiefly at council staff, the public are also welcome to attend. A bugler from the Honourable Artillery Company will play Last Post and Reveille.

November 6, 2009