You may remember that we found out about "thankful villages" during a visit to Cromwell (which itself is one such village).

Having then discovered that there are four in Nottinghamshire, we've embarked on a little quest to visit them all.

A bit of context: From each of the approximately 16,000 villages across England, young men (and some women) set out to serve in the First World War. Over 700,000 of the British forces died. Yet 50-odd village communities were able to welcome back all their combatants safe and sound.

It was Nottinghamshire author and journalist Arthur Mee who first described these places as "thankful villages", and settlements whose serving men and women all also returned alive from World War II subsequently became known as "doubly thankful".

Sadly, this status brought mixed feelings, as Hugh Morris explains: "Far from being a cause for celebration, the villages had a somewhat tumultuous 20th century, with some perceiving the blessing as a source of shame or embarrassment. Few had the stomach for drawing attention to their good fortune."

Some villages, however, eventually came to feel that there should be memorials to honour those who served, even if there was no local loss of life. In 2007, for example, Stocklinch, a thankful village in Somerset, established a plaque to celebrate the lives of those who fought and returned, rather than fought and died.

And in case anyone is suspecting that these villages' soldiers might somehow have been employed in cushy positions, the plaque in St Peter's, Helperthorpe, Yorkshire, indicates how many of the returnees had been captured, wounded, and/or gassed.

Anyway, there's a very pleasant little walk that takes in Maplebeck, our second thankful village, and its tiny neighbour, Winkburn.

We had a glorious winter's afternoon to do it in, with bright blue sky and a low, golden sun.













Back in Maplebeck, we chatted briefly in the churchyard to a local lady, who told us that there is in fact one WWI soldier buried there. But he wasn't "from" the village (he had moved here because of his wife, a Maplebeck native), and he died in the vicious flu pandemic that started in 1918, rather than as a result of the fighting. Sad though this death is, the village still counts itself as unscathed and therefore thankful.


The community, however, did not entirely escape from the tragedy of war:


These five airmen, aged between 21 and 27, were serving with the New Zealand Air Force, and the fatal crash took place during a night training mission. They are all buried in the cemetery at Ollerton, northwest of Newark.

Maplebeck's little church is one of only five in England to be dedicated to St Radegund.

Yes, she sounds like a Tolkien character... But she was, we're told, "a 6th Century Thuringian princess who was reluctantly married off to the Frankish King, Clothaire I. After the king murdered her brother, she fled to take sanctuary at the church of Noyou and became a nun. She founded the Convent of Our Lady of Poitiers. She died in 587 and was canonised in the 9th century." What a story... There's a bit of a mystery here, however, as the church is down in the records as St John's right up until 1895. Was it rededicated when it was extensively restored in 1898? If so, the local newspaper did not see fit to include this detail in its report.






Going further back in time, the church was a chapel belonging to the Knights Hospitaller, and was related to the Hospitallers’ "camera" at Winkburn.

Discouraged by the "private" notices by the side of the road, we didn't get to see the little church in Winkburn, which is dedicated to St John of Jerusalem.

But this is such an interesting little diversion in the story, with leads to so many other things to find out about, that we'll definitely try to return another day. (POSTSCRIPT 21 December: And return we did...)