Crowds gather for Remembrance Sunday commemorations in Northamptonshire

The names of more than 150 soldiers were read out

The rain did not stop thousands of people paying their respects across Northamptonshire on Remembrance Sunday.

In Daventry, the names of more than 150 soldiers who died during the World Wars were read out by local schoolchildren.

The congregation at a church service following the wreath laying were told there were just two villages in the county that did not lose anyone.

Meanwhile, Northampton's two MPs were among those who laid wreaths in the county town.

The names of the war dead that were read out during the Daventry ceremony included 114 from World War One and 40 from World War Two.

A sea of umbrellas came out in Northampton as people braved the rain

At the church service, Chris Ward from the Royal British Legion told the congregation that there were believed to be just 53 "thankful villages" in the UK.

He said: "It was the author Arthur Mee in the 1930s that suggested the phrase 'thankful village', which is basically a village which had lost nobody in the war because all those who left to serve came home again."

He added that Woodend, near Towcester, and East Carlton, near Corby, were the only two thankful villages in Northamptonshire.

St Andrew's Church in Kettering, which is also the home of Kettering Arts Centre, held a Service of Remembrance

Umbrellas dominated the scene in Northampton as hundreds of people watched a parade of veterans, uniformed organisations and local dignitaries.

The two Northampton MPs, Andrew Lewer and Michael Ellis, both laid wreaths

The wreath-laying at the war memorial on Wood Hill was followed by a service in All Saints' Church.

The rector, Father Oliver Coss, told his congregation that the threat of war had never gone away.

He said: "Here, we discharge our solemn obligation, a personal covenant with the past, in no small measure of awareness that tomorrow might be the day in which we might have to send out children to do what we thought our grandparents and great-grandparents had done for the last time."

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