Clydesdale Remembrance Services 2013 Slideshow

Lest we forget...wreaths were laid in the Memorial Hall at Lanark after the annual Remembrance service (Pic Andrew Wilson)

Almost everywhere in the Gazette’s vast Clydesdale patch, Remembrance Sunday organisers reported very healthy turnouts at the annual gatherings to pay homage to each community’s war dead.

For most of our hamlets, villages and towns, this always moving ritual has taken place every November since shortly after the close of World War One.

But there was an exception where wreaths were laid at a War Memorial for the first time in at least 20 years.

This was at Braidwood where one of the local councillors, David Shearer, had recently learned that the village hall had actually been originally ereceted in the 1920s as the official war memorial.

Within the hall was an almost forgotten plaque bearing the names of Braidwood’s war dead, unrecognised by a Remembrance Sunday service for a generation or more.

After helping lay wreaths at the War Memorial in Carluke, both Councillor Shearer and Provost Eileen Logan travelled to Braidwood to resume the paying of proper respects once again.

With next year seeing the centenary of the start of World War One, even this year’s excellent turnouts are expected to be bettered in 2014.

Our slideshow features pictures at Braidwood, Leadhills and Elsrickle taken by Gazette photographer Lindsay Addison and pictures at Carluke, Lanark, Carnwath, Crawford, Carstairs Junction and Lesmahagow by freelance photographer Andrew Wilson.