Higham Ferrers bar decorates walls with hundreds of poppies as it gets ready to celebrate Remembrance Sunday

Joe’s Bar in Higham Ferrers has gone the extra mile to honour Remembrance this year by decorating the inside of the premises with hundreds of poppies.

Taking about three hours to complete, the bar in High Street has been plastered with real poppies and the tables are also draped in appropriate cloths for the day as it looks to mark the occasion and use it as a means to bring people together.

Joe Granfield, the leaseholder of the bar, spent time in the armed forces and did ‘the full tour’ and ‘served everywhere’, including Iraq in 2003.

He said: “Because of that we get quite a few service personnel down.

“People that aren’t members come in and we charge them £2 for the privilege, but we donate that to the Royal British Legion.

"We drink from the early afternoon, Remembrance Sunday is my favourite day of the year, I love it.

"We’ve all lost people serving, and we get a good smattering of forces that come down where we can banter.”

Joe has previously worked with the Royal British Legion, and commissioned the poppy sculpture in the Square, which he claims is one of only two in the country.

He added: “The Square is absolutely chocka for the size of the town, but when it’s finished I’ve never seen a busier town for all the socialising that goes on afterwards.

“Pretty much everyone’s doing entertainment, all the pubs are chocka, it’s busy all day long...Higham really celebrates Remembrance Sunday.”