A group of veterans have joined forces to clean ex-army graves that have been left unkept across the county.

Inspired by  Steve Davis, who has single-handedly been cleaning graves for 5 years under the name the Military Grave Restorer, Peter Brown decided to set up a group in Oxfordshire.

Mr Brown served with Mr Davis for the Royal Green Jackets during his time in the army from 1978 to 1987.

The group have cleaned 15 Crimean War graves at St James Church in Cowley and most recently tended to marble graves at Spring Road Cemetery in Abingdon.

Mr Brown, 65, from Abingdon said: “Steve Davis has just come back from Jersey where he cleaned 75 graves from both the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Waterloo.

“I served with him so that put my mind to getting a group together in Oxford to do the same.

“We have done two projects now, we have done one at St James Park in Cowley that has 15 Crimeon war graves.

“They were overgrown and you couldn’t see them through the stinging nettle.

“We cut them all down and cleaned around the graves, cleaned the cast iron crosses and have oiled them.”

“And at Spring Road we have been cleaning marble graves and they have come up wonderful.

“We are planning to do graves all across Oxfordshire. The ones we have been cleaning are pre-1914 and a couple of First World War graves.”

Mr Brown a lot of military graves are left “neglected” and believes cleaning the graves keeps their “memory alive”.

He said: “Obviously what happens is the people are buried or a cenotaph is put up because their bodies are still on the battlefield.

“The family either move away or die off and the graves get forgotten. If you look at most graveyards there are a lot of forgotten graves.

“It’s such a nice thing to do to bring someone’s grave from looking old and tattered to where people can actually see the grave.

“Most of us in the service lost someone they knew or they have trained with, and it’s a good way of keeping the memory of those who give the ultimate sacrifice alive.”

A JustGiving page has been set up to raise money to buy hand and power tools that are needed to clean the graves.

Mr Brown said: “We are a new group and it costs money to clean the graves as we use environmentally friendly chemicals and certain power tools that we need, so we have to get them together to be able to clean the graves.”

To see the JustGiving page visit here: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/peter-brown-8.