Criticism spurs man's hundreds of lamp-post poppies

A village in Derbyshire has become covered in hundreds of poppies after a dispute on social media.

Keith Buzzard initially bought and put up 134 plastic poppies in response to criticism online of a local group's hand-made Remembrance display in Heage.

He was then spurred on to put a poppy on every lamp-post in the village after another Facebook comment said they were nice but there were "too many".

He said it "was like a red rag to a bull, the second I saw that, I thought, 'I can do better'."

Initially, members of the Friends of Heage community group hand-made 35 poppies to put up in the village.

Kaye Litchfield, who is part of the group, said: "Unfortunately we don't have much money because we've not been formed very long and we're only voluntary.

"So we counted the lamp-posts on the main street and realised we needed to make 35 poppies, so we did that and we did give a donation to the Royal British Legion."

Shortly after, the displays received criticism on a local Facebook page.

It was then that Mr Buzzard, from the League of Zeal Motorbike Club, got in touch with Ms Litchfield and volunteered to purchase some more poppies.

"Myself, my in-laws and the bike club rallied round and raised enough between us to go and purchase 134 poppies," he said.

"We thought about doing the main roads around the village so you would come across a poppy which ever direction you looked."

After the extra poppies went up on lamp-posts around the village, another social media post said there were "too many".

"So we went round and counted every single lamp-post in the village that we'd not put one on and we came to the number of 79 so I worked out how much it would cost us which was £240," said Mr Buzzard.

He asked the local community to help raise the money.

"The response was just out of this world," he said. "People just wanted to get on board with it because you can never have too many poppies."

Mr Buzzard then raised £600 in two days.

The money left over was used to purchase a limited edition ceramic poppy from the National Memorial Arboretum.

That will be gifted to the best garden display in the village.

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