Volunteers begin packing away Tower of London’s 888,246 ceramic poppies

Art installation commemorating first world war dead has been seen by more than 5 million people since July


Yesterday hundreds of volunteers began the long and repetitive task of removing and packing the 888,246 ceramic poppies that have so gripped the British public’s imagination at the Tower of London.

Even the rain stopped as the first poppies were taken off their metal stems at about 9am on Wednesday, the day after Armistice Day. Each was carefully placed in cardboard boxes ready to be taken to a factory in the west Midlands. They will then be delivered to the 600,000 people who paid £25, with six charities each expected to benefit by £1.2m. Private investors who lent money to fund the project are also expected to benefit.

About 1,000 people a day, many of whom were among the 19,000 who put the flowers in the Tower moat between July and Armistice Day, are due to work in three three-hour shifts a day over the next two weeks packing the flowers away.

One of the volunteers was Agnes Atkinson, aged 49, who moved to London from the Philippines 22 years ago. “I think I am so lucky to be picked and be here for the first morning,” she said. “To be part of it is such an amazing experience.”

She added that pulling them up was hard work: “Some of them are really quite stubborn, so you really have to dig your hands down and pull it.”

More than 5 million people are estimated to have visited the art installation, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, by artist Paul Cummins, over the last five months.

Among the crowds yesterday was Irma Ansell, a garden designer, from Buckinghamshire anxious to see the poppies before it was too late. “I had no idea how enormous this was,” she said. “It’s breathtaking. I haven’t got any family who were killed in the first or second world wars but I do have family who were in the war and it had a great effect on them and their friends. Their whole lives were changed. So I’m here really to respect what they gave up.”

Raven Tuson, a 22-year-old jewellery designer from London, had mixed feelings about them going but thought the point made by the artists, ceramicist Paul Cummins and set designer Tom Piper – that the installation’s transience was part of its power – was valid.

“I thought I’d kick myself if I never saw it,” said Tuson. “It would be one of those things I’d be gutted about because everyone I’ve spoken to has seen it. It’s about coming to pay your respects as well, and there is the shock factor of seeing how many there are. I never imagined this many.

“It’s moving. My generation don’t really know how many people it was but when you see it … the reality.”

Sonja Underwood, a South African who has lived in London for nine years and works in marketing, visited the tower with her husband. “We just wanted to come and see what it looked like. In real life it is much, much more impressive. It’s stunning. It’s amazing. It’s horrible to think that so many people died. Each one was a person … it’s crazy.”

She said she was glad the installation was goingsaying it would lose its impact if it stayed.

Two parts of the installation – the Weeping Willow, a cascade of poppies which spills from a window of the castle, and the Wave, which swirls out of the moat to form an arch over the entrance to the Tower – will remain in place until the end of the month. They will then go on tour around the country until 2018, when they will be gifted to the Imperial War Museums in London and Manchester.

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