National Arboretum receives its millionth visitor

Image caption, Alan Hughes, centre, and wife Nancy with Col John Barkshire

The National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire has welcomed its millionth visitor since opening nine years ago.

Alan Hughes of Chippenham, Wiltshire, a former air radar technician, was presented with a bottle of champagne by Col John Barkshire, Chair of Trustees.

The Armed Forces Memorial at the Arboretum records the name of every serviceman killed since 1945.

It now averages around 300,000 visitors a year.

'Significance'

Mr Hughes was at the Arboretum for the RAF Boy Entrants Association's annual service of Remembrance when he became the milestone visitor.

Charlie Bagot Jewitt, Arboretum chief executive, said he was delighted it had attracted more than one million visitors.

"The Arboretum has such meaning and significance for everyone who visits," he said.

It features 50,000 maturing trees and 160 memorials.

It commemorates personnel killed on duty or as a result of terrorism, from the end of the Second World War to the conflict in Afghanistan.