It was, in its way, a very Scottish occasion. With heads bowed on a cold hillside, the people of Lockerbie yesterday expressed a wish to “ring out the darkness of the land” in a sombre ceremony to mark the 20th anniversary of the air disaster over their town.

The wreath laying service, one of several events held of both sides of the Atlantic, took place at the garden of remembrance laid on the outskirts of the Borders town, to commemorate the 270 people who died when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in mid-air.

In accordance with the express wishes of the community, the ecumenical service at Lockerbie was deliberately low key, devoid of pomp and famous guests. Senior politicians chose to stay away.

Instead, around 350 local residents, including members of the mountain rescue team, off-duty police officers and council workers, chose to make a quiet pilgrimage to the wind-scoured Dryfesdale Cemetery.

The implicit message from the gathering was that after two decades it was time to reclaim Lockerbie and move on from the “gut-wrenching” horror of the bombing.

In the words of Canon Martin Bands, from the local Episcopal church, enough years had passed for people affected by the tragedy “not to curse the darkness, but to light a candle”.

To express the mood, Lisa Vickers, the US Consul in Edinburgh, read out the Tennyson poem “Ring Out, Wild Bells”. She suggested that people should “ring out the grief that saps the mind” and instead ring in” the common love of good”.

When the aircraft, flying from Heathrow to New York, exploded at 31,000ft, all 259 passengers and crew died. Another 11 people were killed on the ground. Parts of the town were annihilated by the impact and bodies and wreckage were scattered over 100 square miles. It was the biggest peacetime mass murder in British history.

But over the years Lockerbie, a unpretentious, agricultural town, found the attention hard to take, and has sought to move on.

Only three official wreaths were laid yesterday – by Ms Vickers, by Jean Tulloch, the Lord Lieutenant of Dumfries, and by a representative of the local community council – but another dozen or so individuals, including local bereaved families, laid their own personal tributes as a piper played the tune Highland Cathedral.

Father Joseph Holmes, from the local Roman Catholic Church, said in his address that a family who had lost their son in the tragedy had written to him every year before Christmas for 20 years.

This year, he said, they had told him that although they had many thoughts “of what might have been” they had been blessed with four other children and ten grandchildren, and wanted now to express a note of hope and optimism.

Canon Bands remarked that everything meshed together, to fit into a history and a place. After 20 years it was time to reflect on how things had changed; and the way local people moved into the new century depended, he said, on how they dealt with the “gut-wrenching” memories.

What happened in 1988, he said, “long since ceased to be a Lockerbie event and become a world event and takes its place in the universal pattern of good and evil.”

Last night, at the exact time the plane exploded – 7.03pm – vigils were held at Dryfesdale Church, in the town, and also at nearby Tundergarth Church, where the jumbo’s nose cone landed.

At Heathrow, relatives and some former employees of the Pan Am airline attended a private memorial led by the Rev John Mosey, whose daughter Helga died in the disaster.

New York State’s Syracuse University, which lost 35 students in the bombing, held a memorial and some 500 people attended remembrance services at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington DC. Prayers were said and the names of all the victims read out at the Pan Am 103 cairn at the cemetery.

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