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Images above and right: Courtesy of CWGC
WW1 Cemeteries
Warlencourt British Cemetery
...Including - Hexam Road Cemetery, le Sars
Pas de Calais, France
1689 Identified Casualties from both WW1
The cemetery contains 3,505 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War. 1,823 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 55 casualties known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials commemorate 15 casualties buried in Hexham Road Cemetery, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.
Cemetery designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.
Warlencourt, the Butte de Warlencourt and Eaucourt-L'Abbaye were the scene of very fierce fighting in 1916. Eaucourt was taken by the 47th (London) Division early in October. The Butte (a Roman mound of excavated chalk, about 17 metres high, once covered with pines) was attacked by that and other divisions, but it was not relinquished by the Germans until the following 26 February, when they withdrew to the Hindenburg Line.
The 51st (Highland) Division fought a delaying action here on 25 March 1918 during the great German advance, and the 42nd (East Lancashire) Division recaptured the ground on 25 August 1918.
The cemetery was made late in 1919 when graves were brought in from small cemeteries and the battlefields of Warlencourt and Le Sars.
The largest burial ground moved into this cemetery was:-
Hexam Road Cemetery, le Sars, on the West side of the Abbey grounds. (Hexham Road was the name given to the road leading from Warlencourt to Eaucourt. Le Sars was captured by the 23rd Division on 7 October 1916, and again by the Third Army on 25 August 1918.) This cemetery was used from November 1916 to October 1917, and contained the graves of 17 soldiers from the United Kingdom and 13 from Australia.
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Notable burials or memorials
Victoria Cross Recipient:
2nd Bn. Otago Regiment, New Zealand Expeditionary Force, killed in action 1st October 1916 aged 26, Plot III. F. 11.
Son of Robert and Jessie Brown, of Wharf St., Oamaru, New Zealand. Native of Dunedin.