A YORK city centre church is set to be covered in poppies next autumn to mark the 100th anniversary of the Armistice which ended the First World War.

Priest-in-charge Jane Nattrass is planning to launch a year-long project to create the huge and spectacular art installation on all four walls of All Saints Church in Pavement.

She will ask knitting and crochet enthusiasts, schoolchildren and church and community groups to create as many as 180,000 poppies with wool, felt and any other items.

These will then be attached to army camouflage netting which will be draped down each side of the church.

She hopes the installation will go up in October next year and stay up for a month until after Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday on November 11, 2018.

Any remaining funds in The Press’s City of York Afghanistan Commemorative Appeal may be used to help meet the costs of the project.

There is already a stained glass window at the church created by the appeal fund in memory of three York servicemen who died in the Afghanistan campaign, and the poppy installation will be in memory of them as well as others who have died in other wars.

Banners featuring poppies were installed yesterday on the church’s famous lantern tower as a forerunner to the project, with the flowers particularly visible at night when the lantern is illuminated.

The priest asked anyone who decides to make poppies to keep them until next September, when community groups will be asked to attach them to camouflage netting.

“We are hoping to have enough poppies attached to netting to cover the whole of All Saints Pavement Church on the outside,” she said.

“It would be lovely to have poppies with the names of all those who are commemorated on the memorial boards in our churches.”

Denise Edgar, president of the York branch of the Royal British Legion, praised the venture, saying: “I think it’s a perfect way to commemorate the centenary of the First World War Armistice.

“It’s a stroke of genius, because it will involve everybody of all ages, from five years old to 100.”

The Rev Nattrass said more details would become available later but asked anyone interested in contributing to the project to email her at poppies2018@aol.com.