Essex Farm Cemetery

Location

Boezinge is a village in the province of West Flanders, north of Ieper on the Diksmuidseweg road (N369). From the station turn left into M.Fochlaan and go to the roundabout. Then turn right and continue to the next roundabout. Turn left and drive to the next roundabout and then turn right into Oude Veurnestraat. Take the 2nd turning on the left, which is the Diksmuidseweg, and follow the road under the motorway bridge; the Cemetery will be found on the right hand side of the road.

In effect what this means is that it is easier to reach the cemetery coming from Ieper. The cemetery is on a section of dual-carriageway.

From Ieper take the Boezinge Road and as soon as you come under the motorway you will see the cemetery.

Historical Information

The land south of Essex Farm was used as a dressing station cemetery from April 1915 to August 1917.

The Field Dressing Station - at the time John McCrae was here in 1915 it would not have been concreted.

The burials were made without definite plan and some of the divisions which occupied this sector may be traced in almost every part of the cemetery, but the 49th (West Riding) Division buried their dead of 1915 in Plot I, and the 38th (Welsh) Division used Plot III in the autumn of 1916.

There are 1,199 servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 102 of the burials are unidentified but special memorials commemorate 19 casualties known or believed to be buried among them.

The cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.

The 49th Division Memorial is immediately behind the cemetery, on the canal bank.

In Flanders Fields

It was in Essex Farm Cemetery that Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian Army Medical Corps wrote the poem In Flanders Fields in May 1915.

Lt. Colonel John McCrae