It was a very early start but well worth it for some twenty hardy souls who were determined to remember Armistice Day at 6am at Coronation Park yesterday.

Piper Geoff Menzies of Rainhill, Lancashire played two haunting tunes which would have been heard in the trenches of France where pipers played every day for the four years of WW1 with specific tunes to update the troops on how the conflict was progressing or otherwise. He was joined by town crier Don Evans who read a specially commissioned poem to commemorate the occasion a century on.

And you could have heard a pin drop as the haunting 'When the battle's o'er' and 'Going home' was played at precisely 6am to the folk who gathered near the war memorial with the only discordant note a few minutes later when a group of teens interrupted the dignified occasion by shouting over "What are you's all doing?' 'Is it Remembrance day?' before heading for McDonalds from the Poundstretcher car park.