COMMUNITIES throughout Worcestershire are today paying spectacular tributes to Lord Nelson and the gallant crews of his fleet to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

Beacons will be lit, thanksgiving services held, parades will march, special dinners arranged and toasts drunk to mark Trafalgar Day today.

One of the biggest events will be held in Worcester on Sunday, October 23, when the Royal Naval Association is organising a huge parade through the streets of the city.

About 250 former Naval servicemen and women, sea cadets, members of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment, the Grenadier Guards and Royal British Legion, accompanied by the Tenbury Wells Band, will march along the High Street to the Cathedral.

The parade starts at 1.15pm from Bank Street and will be followed by a service in the Cathedral at 2pm. The parade will then return to the Guildhall where Commander Jamie Miller, the naval regional officer for Wales and Western England, will take the salute. A reception will follow in the Guildhall.

Ken Holloway, of the Royal Naval Association, said: "We normally hold a service every year in West Bromwich. But we felt it was such a special event this year the Cathedral would lend itself to the occasion."

A mass and thanksgiving service, including the music of Hayden, to mark Trafalgar Day will also be held at Old St Martin's Church in the Cornmarket at 10am on the Sunday, while a special community service will be held St Andrew's Church in Droitwich at 4pm.

Meanwhile, the people of Upton Snodsbury and Droitwich will tonight light beacons as part of a national event that will see fires spring up across the country.

A giant torch, on top of a seven-metre telegraph pole, is being organised by Upton Snodsbury Parish Council and will be lit at about 7.15pm. The Queen will light the first beacon in Portsmouth - mimicking the scene two centuries ago when victory fires were used to spread the news.

Parish council chairman Terry Eagle and village resident David Cash, both keen local historians, will also visit Upton Snodsbury CE First School to tell youngsters about the battle, in 1805.

Mr Eagle said: "We are keen to celebrate something that was very significant in history and we are going to the school so the children have a hands-on experience. The battle affected all of us - had we lost we would have been speaking French or German."

The beacon has been made out of metal strapping and is one metre along the bottom, a metre-and-a-half high and the same diameter at the top.

The casing will be stuffed with straw, wood and branches, before being hoisted on top of a telegraph pole and lit.

It is hoped hundreds of people from Upton Snodsbury and neighbouring villages will turn up for hot soup, punch, toffee apples and fireworks.

The Mayor of Droitwich, Councillor Richard Morris, will light a beacon at 7pm on the highest point in Droitwich at St Augustine's Church. Members of the public are invited to attend the lighting ceremony.

Other events in the county include a celebration lunch for the Worcestershire Association of Wrens at St Andrew's Hotel, Droitwich, and a Trafalgar Day dinner organised by the Malvern Hills Community Foundation, due to take place at the Feathers Hotel in Ledbury tomorrow.

ITV weather presenter Charlie Neil will be the star guest at a musical celebration evening in Cleobury Mortimer as part of the town's Trafalgar celebrations.

She will compere a musical evening at Lacon Childe School tonight. The celebrations continue tomorrow night when a Trafalgar dinner featuring local produce will be accompanied by period verse and narration read by the Cleobury Players.

Tickets for the events in Cleobury Mortimer are available from the Market Hall tourist information centre as well as from Fred Bear, Cleobury News and The Fighting Cocks Pub in Stottesdon. Prices are £5 (£3.50 concessions) for the musical evening and £12.50 for the Trafalgar Meal.

How the news was reported in 1805

In the days before television and the internet, newspapers were the only way the nation could learn about Nelson's death and the famous victory at Trafalgar.

This is how our sister paper, the Berrow's Journal - the world's oldest continuously published newspaper - brought Worcester residents the news, in a piece reprinted from the London Gazette.

LONDON

The preceding Gazette announces one of the most important naval victories that ever was achieved by the gallantry and skill of British seamen. The Combined Squadrons of France and Spain, which had some days before come out of the harbour of Cadiz, were engaged by the British Fleet under Lord Nelson on the 21st Oct and completely defeated, 19 of their ships being left in the hands of the victors. Never, in any age, was a victory obtained so complete and decisive. Never were so many

ships of the enemy taken in one engagement; and all this without the loss of a single British ship. But we have the affliction to add, that this victory has been purchased with the life of Lord Nelson. That matchless hero received a musket ball in the middle of the action, which he survived but a little time.

When we consider the moment at which this fortunate achievement took place, and its uncommon magnitude, it appears that hardly any thing more singularly adapted to confirm and establish the foundation of the British greatness could have happened. It is a proud equivalent to the unexampled progress of our enemy on the Continent. It is a blow to his presumptuous hopes, of which the effects cannot for years be repaired. It is a cause of animation, not to Britons only, but to every power in Europe, engaged in the arduous contest with this formidable foe. It will stem the torrent of that dejection, which the-late events so powerfully tended to create, and it sets the dangers of the invasion of this country at a still greater distance than even before the capitulation of Ulm.