STONE sculptor Keith Carter Harris is to create panels featuring a dove of peace and poppies for a village memorial wall.

Wincham Parish Council is planning to create a war memorial and garden at the Linnards Lane playing field in time for this year’s Remembrance commemorations.

The project includes a wall of Cheshire brick featuring a central panel engraved with the names of local servicemen who died in the First and Second World Wars.

The two relief carvings by Keith will be inset either side of the panel, and will show a dove of peace holding an olive branch in its beak and two poppy seed heads on either side of the main stem.

Each panel will be 12 inches square, and the design will be set within a countersunk circle. The panels will be created from Perryfield Whitbed Portland limestone, which is off-white to buff in colour.

It offers the best quality for fine detail carving, is very durable and will complement the pastel reds of the brick.

The sculptures will cost £960, and the scheme has been approved by the parish council.

Keith comes from Wilmslow, and members of his family served in the world wars. His grandfather Hyman Cohen was a bugler in The First World War, and his father, Bert Harris, was a sergeant in the 6th Airborne parachute regiment in The Second World War.

Keith took inspiration for the poppies panel from the First World War poem In Flanders Fields by John McCrae, which includes the lines “In Flanders Fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row.”