He lived at The Hyde, Hambleden
and his grave is in Pheasants Hill,
Hambleden, Bucks.

Every year a memorial
is placed there
by The Poppy Factory
on the anniversary
of his death,
28th November.

In 2024 a plaque was commissioned
to be placed in the South Transept of
St Mary's, Hambleden,
created by stonemason Martin Cook.

This was unveiled on 26th January 2025 at a service attended by Harriet Coleridge, George Howson's granddaughter, and other members of the Howson family, current leaders of The Poppy Factory, local Royal British Legion and Hambleden Parish Council members and Lt. Col. Colin Bulleid from The Royal Hampshire Regiment.

Please click here to see link to
The Poppy Factory/Hambleden page
 

Debbie Boughtflower, Director of Operations at The Poppy Factory and Mark Young, Production Manager, who unveiled the plaque.

Rev Sue Morton’s Address at the unveiling of the plaque to Major George Howson

If you go to the Poppy Factory in Richmond, one of the first things you are invited to do is to make a poppy. That sounds quite easy… after all what can possibly go wrong with four pieces of equipment: a green stalk, a cut out leaf, a red paper poppy, and a black centre? However, poppies were made initially by people who were injured, disabled or had lost limbs in the First World War. And so, you are invited to assemble your poppy with one arm behind your back.

Ah!  That is definitely more of a challenge!  Immediately we are drawn into the lives of those who had worked at the factory, as we are shown how to place the poppy parts in a wooden block and how to add them in the right order, using only one hand. It gives us a glimpse of some of the challenges, the questions, that faced George Howson as he set up the Poppy Factory and, it was a visit to the Poppy Factory that begun the journey that has led to this service today.

We don’t know if George ever asked himself the question: ‘who is my neighbour’ but we see plenty of evidence in George’s own life in answer to the question posed in our Bible reading. George was described as a soldier of the finest type: brave, cheerful and much-loved by his men. He also had a strong sense of the Christian values of justice and compassion; those values most likely encouraged by his clergymen ancestors: his father – also called George – and both his paternal and maternal grandfathers. And no doubt George would have been familiar with today’s Bible reading. And rather like the traveller and the Good Samaritan - as he is known - making their way through the treacherous rocky hills above Jerusalem, George was no stranger to danger himself. He knew war, having served on the Western Front with the Hampshire Regiment and been awarded the Military Cross for bravery at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, as well as further medals and being mentioned in dispatches, and for bravery in saving the life of a man who had fallen into the River Somme.

George had the gift of noticing his neighbour. He noticed his men; he noticed their plight; he was not one to walk by on the other side of the road or to think about himself. Even when wounded in battle he continued to encourage his men and to look out for them. After the First World War, George noticed the men who were struggling with injuries sustained in battle, those whose bodies were no longer complete, those with absent limbs. Who would employ them now? How would they and their families manage? Rather like the Samaritan in the story, George had the compassion to act. His vision was to do something, to take the relatively newly established time of Remembrance which recalled those who did not return and those affected by war, and to employ these men to make poppies.…

In 1922 George set up the Poppy Factory, the poppy having become established as a symbol of Remembrance following their growth amongst the churned-up mud of the battlefields and captured in John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Field. The Royal British Legion had ordered the first silk poppies in 1921 and George Howson proposed that the poppies should be made by disabled war veterans.  The British Legion agreed and gave George Howson £2000 to set up a factory in May 1922.

In our Bible passage, the 1^st century listeners would have been surprised that a Samaritan had bothered to stop and help an injured traveller – Samaritans were then not highly thought of – but in our unfolding of the Poppy Factory story, it was George who surprised himself.

In the Poppy Factory, there is a letter that George wrote to his parents, with the address of The Hyde, Hambleden printed at the top. It stated: ‘If the experiment is successful, it will be the start of an industry to employ 150 men. I do not think it can be a great success, but it is worth trying.’ Such moving humble words for us to recall as we gather here today. And, it was worth trying…within three weeks the first men had started work and eventually George commissioned a purpose-built factory and housing for his workers and their families.  You can still see these today.

Thanks to George Howson, the Poppy Factory in Richmond still helps hundreds of veterans back into work. George’s vison of changing lives is still implemented today, through the people employed at the factory who are veterans or relatives of veterans, still making poppies and wreaths that we see each year. George was the one to show mercy, the one to show compassion to his neighbour. 

And there are echoes of George’s story around in this church of Hambleden today.  A church that would have been familiar to him, within walking distance of his home at The Hyde. 

Sadly in 1936, at the relatively young age of 50 George died from pancreatic cancer, his funeral conducted by his father. Major George Howson was buried at Pheasants Hill Cemetery, an extension of the Hambleden Churchyard, overlooking the peace and quiet of the valley he called home, far away from the guns of the Western Front.

But the echoes of George’s story live on in the material covering the altar today which is made up of an off-cut of a roll of poppy silk from the Factory; it is also used to veil the plaque in memory of George.

You may notice that the material is not complete - that, like the poem In Flanders Field - there is row on row of cut-out poppy petals. Each empty space a poppy petal made for someone who will be remembered on Armistice Day or Remembrance Sunday, and surely including George himself, especially today.  

The echoes live on in the poppy wreath: one is laid by the Poppy Factory each year on the anniversary of George’s death - 28th November - and, in recent times brought by Production Manager, Mark Young, who will carry out our unveiling today. And the poppy wreath is echoed in this plaque carved from a single piece of Portland stone by stonemason Martin Cook.

And so, as we give thanks to God for Major George Howson MC, noticing the way his story sits around us, it is fitting to close with some words of prayer which would have been familiar to George

The Regimental Collect of the Royal Hampshire Regiment -

“O Christ, who was tempted for us in the wilderness,
lead we pray Thee,
Thy servants of the Royal Hampshire Regiment,
who have been undismayed in battle,
through the trials of this mortal life,
until, entering Thy Heavenly Kingdom where the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose,
we may find rest in Thee;
who with the Father and The Holy Ghost reignest one God forever.” Amen