THE news was not unexpected, yet it brought sadness to the nation.

Newspapers had been preparing and updating their Sir Winston Churchill tribute supplements for years, but the great wartime leader defied them to live past his 90th birthday – dying on Sunday, January 24, 1965.

The Echo’s front page report that Monday began: “Wessex, the ancient warrior kingdom, is mourning the passing of a warrior.”

The paper told how special prayers had been said across the area at church services that Sunday.

At St Peter’s in Bournemouth town centre, the Rev RA Cochraine said: “For countless thousands, he became the symbol of unity, and without that unity, either defeat would have been, humanly speaking inevitable, or the terrible struggle would have been indefinitely prolonged.”

The bells of St Peter’s rang half-muffled and by Monday morning, many shops had pictures of the former leader in their windows.

At Wimborne Minster, the vicar, the Rev SM Epps, said: “His great service to this country and to mankind, chiefly during the world wars, marks him out for all time as the one man who could unite our people and brace them to endure their trials and create conditions in which victory could be won.”

Among those who had encountered Churchill themselves was Major-General JCT Willis, of Parkstone, who recalled: “Sir Winston was very much loved and a great man – but he could be pretty terrifying on occasions.”

That Monday evening, Poole’s borough archivist, Bernard Shaw, gave a lecture for the Workers’ Educational Association at St Peter’s School in Parkstone and recalled how Poole had given Churchill the freedom of the borough.

He said: “In granting the Freedom of Poole to the greatest living Englishman, we showed our gratitude to him for that freedom he saved for us by his brilliant and inspiring leadership during the years when the liberty of man lay in the shadows of tyranny.”

Local authorities all sent their messages of sympathy to Lady Churchill. Sturminster Rural Council sent particular good wishes from the parish of Glanvilles Wootton, where a farmhouse known as the Round Chimneys was once home to the leader’s ancestor John Churchill, the First Duke of Marlborough.

Many businesses decided to close during the funeral and some shops had television sets installed for their staff.

A 20-minute colour film of the funeral was due to arrive at the Lansdowne’s Odeon cinema the next week.

On the afternoon of Saturday, January 30, the Echo brought readers pictures and reports from that morning’s funeral in London.

The front page story began: “They carried the remains of Sir Winston Churchill beneath the vaulted roof of the great cathedral of St Paul’s today and bid him farewell on his final journey into history.

“Here, among the vast congregation of 3,000 gathered to pay him homage, stood his Queen and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, together with Prince Charles, the Queen Mother and other members of the royal family.

“But the world itself seemed to have gathered beneath the great dome on which, in the first winter of his wartime Premiership, Sir Winston himself looked upon – miraculously spared and black against the background of a city in flames.”

In the following days, churches across the country would hold their own services, with 1,200 attending a memorial at Bournemouth’s ‘mother church’, St Peter’s.

Days later, fundraising was under way for a Winston Churchill Memorial Appeal, with 43,000 collection envelopes delivered to Bournemouth homes alone. It still funds overseas studies today.

A Churchill Mark 6 tank was brought from Bovington Museum to stand in front of Poole’s Municipal Buildings as the appeal got underway there.

In April, a tree was planted in Bournemouth’s Lower Pleasure Gardens. Bournemouth West MP Sir John Eden – whose uncle Sir Anthony Eden had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister in 1955 – handed the tree to the mayor, who performed the planting.

Sir John explained that the tree was a sequoiadendron gigantean – “a giant of a tree to commemorate a giant of a man”.

The mayor, Alderman Harry Mears, said: “Anything which I might say about Sir Winston would be superfluous. I plant this tree in memory of the greatest Englishman who ever lived.”