St Michael, South Elmham

Thankful Villages

Millions of families throughout the UK suffered the loss of close family relatives in the Great War of 1914 -18. Losing one family member must have been truly devastating but try to image the grief of William and Julia Souls, of Great Rissington in Gloucestershire who lost five sons. It appears that barely a family or community across the UK escaped World War I untouched by such terrible loss, except that is for the “Thankful Villages”. 

The term “Thankful Villages” was first used by the British writer and journalist Arthur Mee in his King's England, a guide to the counties of England in the 1930s. A Thankful Village was said to be one which lost no men in the Great War as all those who had left to serve ‘King and Country‘ came home again. For instance, in Yorkshire East Riding he writes about Catwick, “Thirty men went from Catwick to the Great War and thirty came back, though one left an arm behind.” Incredibly, Arkholme in Lancashire saw 59 of their sons go to war and all returned. It was also suggested that such villages had no war memorials, although some had monuments, usually in the church, in gratitude for their good fortune.

Among the 16,000 villages in England, Arthur Mee estimated that there were at most 32 Thankful Villages, although he could only positively identify 24. More recent and ongoing research by Norman Thorpe and Tom Morgan, has identified 41 parishes throughout England and Wales from which all soldiers returned, these are listed below: