THE people of Oxfordshire once again this year attended ceremonies to mark Remembrance Sunday in their hundreds, across multiple locations at the now traditional time of 11am.

Coming together to mark remembrance in public is clearly important to a large number of local people of all generations, but not just on Remembrance Sunday.

Each year, a small ceremony involving a barely publicised two minutes' silence takes place at Abingdon War Memorial to mark the anniversary of Armistice Day, at the end of the First World War.

The memorial is located immediately adjacent to the taxi rank and over the years I have been driving a taxi from there, it has grown from a small band of people to more than a hundred in the middle of the working day.

In 2014, at the same location, there was a huge turnout for an event to mark the beginning of the First World War.

Some of us read the names of those from Abingdon who had served in the war, the town band played on the street, the War Memorial was incensed by the local Rector and Abingdon choirs performed a selection of sacred music.

It was an occasion which was both ordinary and extraordinary.

A few days before Remembrance Sunday, news arrived that there is to be a sell off of Ministry of Defence sites by 2029, including Dalton Barracks near Abingdon and Vauxhall Barracks in Didcot, both of which I transport passengers to and from on a regular basis in my taxi.

In Didcot, Northbourne War Memorial, relocated from the old Saint Peter's Church in Church Street to the new Saint Peter’s, was recently granted Grade II listed status, important not just as a means of recognition, but also for town planning and future conservation funding reasons.

At the Dalton Barracks site at Shippon near Abingdon too, there is a statue which honours 142 men of the First Battalion of the Oxfordshire light Infantry, who died in the Boer War in South Africa.

Originally located in St Clement's churchyard, in what is now the middle of The Plain roundabout in Oxford, it has been moved three times during the course of its existence and now lies not in public, but behind rows of wire at Edward Brooks Barracks, adjacent to Dalton Barracks.

Remembrance Sunday is a significant time, coming as it does in the middle of the descent into the darkest and shortest day of the year.

It is right that these memorials should be located in the middle of the communities from whence those who lost their lives came and not behind barbed wire and it is also right that remembrance is an ongoing thing, on an individual basis.

The men of the first battalion of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry are not forgotten in my taxi, every time I catch a glimpse of the statue, on my way to the married quarters at the camp.