Billy Elbrow: Poppies grow by road where beloved son killed

With a mix of red, purple, and blue petals, the colourful wildflower meadow covers roughly the area of a tennis court on the south-east side of the roundabout near Didcot.

Planted four years ago, the flowers bloomed for the first time this spring.

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Their seeds, nearly 50 million of them, were scattered by Jamie and Katrina Elbrow, with the help of friends and family, to remember their eldest son Billy, 20, who was killed in a motorcycle crash on the roundabout in August 2018.

When the poppies finally grew in May this year, the bereaved parents visited the verge and stood among the flowers, some of which have grown to waist-height.

“There’s nothing that will make it easier, but it just makes the roundabout prettier than what it was,” says Jamie, 45.

“It’s to put a smile on other people’s faces when they pass.

“It’s to remember Billy.”

On the evening of August 23, 2018, after finishing a shift at House kitchen supply shop in Oxford’s Westgate Centre, Billy was riding his Kawasaki GPZ500 motorcycle on the A34 when he diverted down a slip-road to the Milton Interchange, stopping at a BP petrol station before rejoining the roundabout.

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At around the same time, motorist Amanda Day arrived at the roundabout. She intended to join the road in the direction of Wantage but missed her exit and continued around once.

Moments later, having skipped a red light, she collided with Billy.

After receiving a call about the accident, Jamie and Katrina rushed to the scene from their home in Abingdon, where Billy still lived with them. They were stopped from seeing their son, who was receiving several blood transfusions at the side of the road. They followed behind the ambulance which took Billy to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where he later died of his injuries.

Day, a senior employee at the Ministry of Defence, was found guilty of causing the crash by a jury at Oxford Crown Court and was given a community penalty.

In the days and weeks that followed the crash, Billy’s friends left flowers, model motorbikes and cans of Monster Energy drink at the scene in tribute.

Jamie says: “I was very aware of other places where that has happened, and sometimes, I think it can become too much at the side of the road.

“I thought, ‘how can we do something that Billy would love?’.

“Billy was massively into World War II – he had books and books and collected helmets. Remembrance Day and the poppies was always quite a big thing for Billy. We’ve always loved poppies as a family.

“Rather than the roundabout becoming like a shrine, I thought, ‘why don’t we put some poppy seeds around it?’

Six months after Billy’s death, and just metres from the spot where he crashed, Jamie and several friends used lawn mowers to cut the weed-heavy grass verge of the roundabout. A couple of days later, they scattered poppy seeds, which had been donated by hundreds of well-wishers.

The first poppy to appear was a metal one, made by Billy’s younger brother Jayden, now 18.

But, besides this, the grass verge remained bare for longer than expected. Nothing grew for three years. In the spring of 2022, the first flowers bloomed – but only a few. It wasn’t until a couple of months ago that the verge finally exploded into colour.

But Katrina, also 45, still finds it difficult to visit the site.

“It’s lovely to look at the flowers, but it doesn’t take away the fear I have of the actual roundabout,” she says.

“While you’re there looking, and taking photos, there will always be some lunatic using it the wrong way, or a police car will whiz past with its sirens. It’s just a horrible interchange.”

Nearly five years after Billy’s death, Katrina only uses the roundabout occasionally, when she needs to.

“Not even words can describe how painful it is to wake up every day without one of your children,” she says. “It’s like you’re acting. You get up and it’s like you put your mask on. You put your smile on and you go out. He’s part of me. I miss him every day.”

Katrina remembers Billy as loving and family minded. Even as a teenager, he would rearrange plans with friends to attend family functions and holidays, and he had a close relationship with his grandparents, who lived across the street.

She says: “If he was with friends in town, even from a young age, and he saw his nan, he would call ‘nanny’ and off he goes. He was never embarrassed.”

Practical and artistic, Billy took after his parents. With Katrina’s help, he learned to write his name at just two years old. When he was older, he would toil away for hours with Jamie in their tool shed, woodworking and creating small models. Billy ‘flourished’ when he began studying carpentry at Abingdon & Witney College and later City of Oxford College.

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After he finished school, Billy worked several jobs, including a six month stint with his dad at Loose Cannon Brewing company in Abingdon. At the time of the accident, he had just been offered the ‘job of his dreams’ restoring old vehicles at Bicester Heritage. He was also a week away from a long-planned holiday with his girlfriend, who he was visiting on the evening of the crash.

“He was going places,” says Katrina. “He was at the best part of his life. He’d achieved so much, had just got the job of his dreams, and had a girlfriend.

“Everything was falling into place.”

Katrina says one of the hardest parts of grief is seeing Billy ‘left behind’ as his friends move on with their lives.

“What I find really difficult is everything has to go on,” she says. “Billy will always be 20. His friends, some now have their own children, the odd one’s got married or is engaged. It’s like he’s been left behind. Everything’s been taken away, not only from him, but from us as well.”

Katrina says she could not visit the spot where Billy crashed if the flowers had not been planted.

“It’s only because the poppies are there that makes me go over,” she says.

Jamie wants to find who is responsible for the mowing and upkeep of the roundabout to ensure the flowers continue to grow over the years.

He says: “If the poppies are allowed to grow, all the seeds will come off those, and we’re just hoping it gets better year-on-year.

"There’s hope for the future.”