In 2025. Gamlingay marked eight decades since the end of World War II with Eco Hub exhibitions in May and June (to mark the anniversary of Victory in Europe Day) and in August (Victory Over Japan Day), the final end of the conflict. Selected content from the exhibition is available here. The exhibitions remembered and honoured those who lived through the war, in combat and on the ‘home front’ in the UK, in particular those who died in the defence of freedom and to defeat tyranny.
The exhibition in August included the stories of those in combat – those who fought, those who died, and those who lived with memories of this war for the rest of their lives. Pictured below are the Knight family from York who visited Gamlingay in August to see the VJ Day exhibition, which included memories of their uncle, Bert Knight, who died in a Japanese Prisoner of War (POW) camp. Later they went to the Knights’ old family home in Sandpit Lane, near the site now of Potton View Care Home, where they met Mark and Becky Lowten, who now live in the much converted property.
Exhibition photo: Mick Knight and his wife Wendy (pointing) and sister, Deann (right). Sandpits photo: Mick and Wendy Knight with Mark Lowten.
The exhibitions featured the memories of local people who were alive in 1945 and able to remember events during World War II, and when peace was celebrated.
This is how the celebrations in May and August were reported in local newspapers. Left: the North Bedfordshire Courier’s coverage of VE Day. Photos of VE Day and Gamlingay during World War II can be viewed on the ‘Gamlingay Photos’ website.
Two large posters showed a timeline of the conflict and a range of official posters produced by the government during the war, some with slogans still remembered and used eight decades later.
The first exhibition, marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany, featured models of VE Day celebrations made by Ken Lincoln (pictured above), a resident at Potton View Care Home. The Biggleswade Chronicle reported on the exhibition and Ken’s models.
The exhibitions were devised, researched and written by John Evans for Gamlingay Parish Council. Thanks go to Gwyn Williams (photo printing), Nick Bruce (Gamlingay photographs), the Gamlingay History Society (additional local photographs), the Imperial War Museum (national and international photos, posters), BBC History Magazine, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire Archives, the Museum of English Rural Life and its Evacuee Collection, Potton View Care Home, Leanne Bacon, Kirstin Rayner and Kate Laugharne.
A copy of ‘Timelines of World War II’ which aided research for the exhibitions has been donated by Gamlingay Parish Council to the Eco Hub library.
The library’s copy of ‘A Village Remembers‘, a booklet produced by students at the then Gamlingay Village College in 1990, has been digitised. Their mission was to find out what life was like during World War II by interviewing local residents.