Britain's largest poppy installation unveiled as over 110,000 put on display

Southend-on-Sea City Council first made the appeal for people to donate poppies back in April, expecting around 7,000 to be donated by local knitters.

The council said they were overwhelmed when they received more than 16 times the number they were expecting.

Allison Dewey, Head of Tourism and Culture at the council told GB News "the appeal just snowballed, we were not expecting it at all".

It took a team of more than 1,000 local volunteers to stitch the 110,000 poppies onto more than three miles of string, which was then hung along the pier over a period of five days.

Linda Elsdon, part of the army of local volunteers, told GB News the biggest challenge to the installation was the wind at the end of the world’s longest pleasure pier.

Another volunteer, Janice Jeeves, said detangling the thousands of knots on the string was her biggest challenge, telling GB News it "took weeks".

The installation was opened to the public today by the Mayor of Southend, Cllr Nigel Folkard.

He led a service of remembrance, where a minute silence was held and the last post played on a bugle.

Cllr Folkard told GB News "each poppy represents a story, made by a different person with their own memories of the significance of remembrance".

A number of veterans attended the service of Remembrance on the pier, including John Fulton, who told GB News the installation made him very proud and "took his breath away".

The installation also includes a fallen soldier statue, adorned with 2,106 poppies, one for every Southend soldier that lost their life in the First and Second World Wars.

"We have a very proud military history”, leader of Southend-on-Sea council, Cllr Daniel Cowan, told GB News.

He added: "This shows how many people are proud of Southend and our heroes and proud of those that have served."

Poppies on the Pier is open to members of the public until November 16.