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Military Historian Medwyn Parry and ex-serviceman Dougie Bankcroft set out on their epic ‘thankful village’ tour in July 2013.

This pair of big-hearted Welsh bikers undertook the road trip in honor of First World War combatants whose heroics have often been overlooked. These were residents of villages across Britain which suffered no fatalities during the 1914-18 conflict.

The idea first came to Medwyn Parry some years ago in Colwinston. "Decades ago I was doing some work in Colwinston. I can't remember whether I'd already noticed that they had no war memorial, but one day it started teeming down and we went into the porch of the local church to shelter," he said.

"I saw the plaque there listing the men who went to the Great War and giving thanks for the fact that they all came home alive.
"It struck me as incredibly unusual at the time, but it was only with the arrival of the internet that I started doing some research and realised just how unusual it was."

There are three Welsh Thankful Villages; Colwinston near Cowbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan, Llanfihangel y Creuddyn on the outskirts of Aberystwyth, and Herbrandston - just a stone's throw from the port of Milford Haven and all are archetypal picture-postcard rural Welsh villages. Herbrandston is unique in that it’s the only one in Wales that is a double thankful; everybody returned from the Second World War as well.

Of more than 1,000 Welsh parishes who sent men to the front, only these three saw all of their sons return safely.

Llanfihangel y Creuddyn welcomed home 12 men in 1918, Colwinston 23, and Herbrandston 32, as well as another 39 in World War Two.

All three had populations under 200 and stood to lose the heart of the village.

Across 16,000 parishes in England and Wales, just 53 are thankful villages, of whom only 14 are said to be doubly thankful. There are none in Scotland and none in Ireland. Dougie and Medwyn visited all of them, covering 2,500 miles and raised over £50,000 for the Royal British Legion.

In each of the villages they visited, Dougie and Medwyn presented residents, including descendants of those who fought, with a commemorative slate plaque and a certificate in remembrance of their contribution.

Thankful villages first came into prominence back in the 1930s when a gentleman called Arthur Mee was touring around Britain making a note of the architecture of the various villages. He noted that so many memorials were being built but some of the villages didn’t have any planned. This was because the ‘Thankful Villages’ as they became coined, lost no men and so they had no war memorials to remind people of the bravery of those who had fought and, in many cases, been scarred physically and mentally.

Location: Colwinston, Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan, CF717NL
Image courtesy of Getty

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