Inspired by the wartime story of Sadako Sasaki, Attingham park decorated their Picture Gallery tree this year with origami cranes to symbolise peace and hope.

In Japanese folklore, cranes have a special significance and are said to live for 1,000 years. A legend promises that anybody who fold 1,000 paper cranes will be granted a wish.

Sadako Sasaki was a young girl in Japan who was exposed to radiation after an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. She developed Leukaemia and when is hospital began folding paper cranes, trying to reach 1,000 so that her wish could e granted. She wished for peace and a world without nuclear weapons.

Every year at the Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima, schoolchildren leave their own origami cranes in memory of Sadako and the thousands of children who were victims of the atomic bomb.*

*from an information board next to the tree