RESPECTFUL silence fell across York, North and East Yorkshire to commemorate those who had fallen in wartime.

Crowds gathered in York’s Memorial Gardens and at Station Rise railway memorial yesterday for two minutes of silence and the placing of poppy wreaths to mark both Armistice Day and the centenary since the start of the First World War.

Flying Officer Miles Wymark-Hoar, 27, has served with the RAF for two years and is the fourth generation of his family to be in the armed forces.

He said: “I had three great-uncles who served in the First World War and all survived and moments like this help commemorate all of that. I think today really signifies how important it still is to people.”

David Ventress, 64, has played the bugle at the Station Rise remembrance service for 50 years. He wore medals won by his grandfather Edward Percy Hinds during the First World War.

David said: “When I started on the 50th anniversary, I felt very out of it. It was very strange as I was 14 years old but as I’ve got older, it’s meant more to me and it really begins to hit home.

“You realise the sheer numbers of people who have and still are dying overseas. I can stand here now and really feel something and it means something to me more each year.”

Jennifer Rose came to York from Hartlepool with her eight-year-old daughter Ruth, mother Liz Moss and grandmother Ida Hodgman, along with her sister Angela Scott and Ida’s cousin Linda Skilbeck, so Ruth could lay a wreath at the Station Rise memorial. The wreath was in honour of Ruth’s great, great, great grandfather Samuel Francis Skilbeck, who served in the First World War, and died shortly after his return to England.

Jennifer said: “We’re very, very proud and very emotional. We’re a very close family, and Ruth got special permission from her school as an educational visit because they have been studying the First World War.”

Ruth said she had learned a lot about the war, and believed the fallen should be remembered.

Elsewhere, a giant poppy made from 2,300 paper poppies cut out by students and volunteers, was laid on Goole Academy’s sports field.

And a field of Remembrance has been created at a York school in memory of 148 former pupils or teachers who lost their lives in either the First or Second World Wars.

Archbishop Holgate’s School has established the field in its newly-developed Archbishop Tutu Spiritual Garden.

A wreath was laid at the Nestle factory’s war memorial in Haxby Road by members of the Royal British Legion in memory of the 245 Rowntree workers who died during the Great War, and pictures of them were posted online at http://uk.pinterest.com/nestleuknews/our-war-memorial/ and made into a short film at http://youtu.be/MdDmcn79MSs