Armistice Day: The only village in Shropshire where everyone who went to fight in WW1 returned alive

Thankful Villages, sometimes known as Blessed Villages, are villages and settlements in England and Wales where everybody who went to fight in World War I returned.

The war had accounted for 880,000 British lives. Six per cent of all males in the country and 11 per cent of all soldiers sent to fight.

Due to the high death toll and bloodiness of battles such as The Somme, it was rare for a village not to have lost any of its young men or have been impacted by The Great War.

The term 'Thankful Villages' was coined by travel writer Arthur Mee in his set of guidebooks, and originally just 30 villages in England and Wales were identified as being a Thankful Village.

But historians have now identified a further 26 civil parishes in England and Wales where all serving personnel returned, and 17 that are known as "doubly thankful" where all men returned safely from both world wars.

None has been identified in Scotland or Northern Ireland, and only one in Shropshire.

Harley, on the northern slopes of Wenlock Edge, has a population of around 200 people, and was named a Thankful Village in 1930.

There were 20 men from the village who left for war in 1914, including four sets of brothers, and yet all of them had returned from the fighting in 1918.

However, Harley is not "doubly thankful" as an airman from the village, John Colin Preece, died, as a prisoner of war in Sumatra during the Second World War.

At the village's church, St Mary's, there is a brass plaque honouring the 20 men from Harley parish who returned.

Below their names it reads: "By the Grace of God everyone of these men returned to the parish after the war".

But at the weekend there will be no service of remembrance at the church nor is there a war memorial to mark the war dead like in surrounding villages such as Cressage.

Anne Sharpe, church warden of St Mary's said: "Being a thankful village means we do not have any remembrance service at the church and no war memorial. We did commission a set of benches a few years ago to mark their thankful status.

"We also had a group of bikers come to mark the 100 years from the end of the war some years ago, who were visiting every Thankful Village in the country.

"Many of us from the village visit Clun for Remembrance Service and there is a procession led by the Royal British Legion two miles away in Cressage but in Harley there won't be any service at the church this weekend."