This year’s Remembrance Sunday, November 11, marks the centenary of the Armistice that brought to an end to the hostilities of the Great War.
This special programme of events will mark the anniversary.
- At 06:00 on Remembrance Sunday, a lone piper at St Magnus Cathedral will join 1,000 individual pipers from across the United Kingdom and the world as they bring in the day’s commemorations with the traditional Scottish lament Battle’s O’er, played at the end of battle.
- At 10:30 the traditional Remembrance Sunday parade will commence. Veterans, Army and Sea Cadets and other groups will muster at the Royal British Legion, setting off shortly afterwards to form up on Broad Street.
- A short service, led by the Salvation Army Captain will lead to a two minutes silence at 11:00, before a special armistice Service takes place in the Cathedral, which culminates with the Cathedral bells ringing at 12:30.
- At 15:00, Orkney’s young people will join forces with Orkney Rocks! choir and others to remember those lost, and the impact the war had on those left behind, in a special concert at the Orkney Arts Theatre. Admission will be free, and there will be an opportunity to make a contribution to the charity, Help for Heroes. Tickets are available at the OIC Customer Services in Kirkwall and the Warehouse Buildings, Stromness.
- At 15:30 the public are invited to Scapa beach to see a large-scale portrait created in the sand of Orcadian soldier Lieutenant Robert Taylor MC, killed during WWI, for Danny Boyle’s 14-18 NOW project, Pages of the Sea. Due to limited parking people attending are encouraged to use a free shuttle bus service leaving the Great Western Road car park at 15:00 (and 15:00 if required), returning at 16:30 (and 17:00 if required). Some additional car parking will be available in the field next to the Sea Cadets’ building.
- At 18:55, a lone bugler at the St Magnus Cathedral will join 1,000 individual buglers from across the UK and oversees territories in sounding the historic Last Post.
- This will be followed by the lighting of a beacon on the St Magnus Cathedral kirk green at 19:00 as part of the national “Beacons of Light” event which will see beacons lit across the country, symbolising an end to the darkness of war and return to the light of peace.
- St Magnus Cathedral will remain the focus as, at 19:05pm, the bells will ring alongside 1,000 others across the nation and beyond.
- Between 17:00 and 20:00 the short film specially commissioned by the Kirkwall Townscape Heritage Initiative for the centenary of the armistice will be projected on to the Cathedral — for the last time.
