On Douglas Head at 10pm on August 4th, the Deputy Mayor and Mayoress of Douglas, Councillor Jon Joughin and Mrs Angela Joughin, councillors and members of the public joined together in a candle-lit service of quiet reflection. It was led by the Ven Andrew Brown, Archdeacon of Man, to honour and pay their respects to those who served in the First World War.
Douglas joined local authorities and national organisations across the UK that evening to support ‘Lights Out’, a campaign marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, by turning off its decorative lighting throughout the town and the street lighting at Douglas Head at 10pm.
Leading prayers, Canon Brown said the declaration of war in August 1914 had been ‘Europe’s darkest night.’
Separately, but to coincide with the service, the Council’s electrical services section projected images of a single poppy onto the facade of the Sefton Hotel and the adjacent advertising boarding.
The ‘Lights Out’ campaign takes its name from words spoken late in the afternoon of August 3rd 1914 by the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’
Photo courtesy of Andrew Barton
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