Anyone visiting the Garden of Remembrance and the memorial to those Corsham men who fell in the Second World War will find an English oak tree at the heart of the site. On 1st November, we were delighted to welcome Mrs. Sarah Rose Troughton, Wiltshire’s Lord Lieutenant (Her Majesty The Queen’s representative in the county) to the garden. Together with Town Council Chairman, Cllr Steve Abbott, the Lord Lieutenant helped plant an English oak in memory of HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who had unveiled the memorial and opened the garden on 1st November 1947. As Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, it was his first official public engagement, less than three weeks before he married Princess Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey. We were honoured to have been able to mark Corsham’s connections with His Royal Highness in such a way and to have planted our first tree as part of the Queen’s Green Canopy (https://queensgreencanopy.org/) – a national initiative to mark next year’s Platinum Jubilee. (With thanks to Julian Carosi, Mr. Corsham, for the photographs.)
Pat Whalley
