Hooge Crater CWGC Cemetery, nr Ypres, Belgium
Hooge Crater Cemetery is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground for the dead of the First World War located in the Ypres Salient in Belgium on the Western Front. Hooge is a small village on the Bellewaerde Ridge, about 4 kilometres east of Ypres in the Flemish province of West-Vlaanderen. The Flanders village of Hooge was the site of a château which was used by the British Army as the divisional headquarters for the area. German forces attacked the château from 24 May 1915, and, despite the detonation of a mine by the 175th Tunnelling Company (operating with the 3rd Division) on 19 July 1915, leaving a massive crater, took control of the château and the surrounding area on 30 July. The Château de Hooge and the crater (craters being strategically important in relatively flat countryside) were taken by the British 6th Division on 9 August. The area was reclaimed by the Germans on 16 June 1916 and retaken by the British on 31 July 1917 when the 8th Division managed to push past it by about a mile. The Germans retook the site in April 1918 as part of the Spring Offensive but were expelled from the area by the British on 28 September as the Offensive faltered. During this time, the Château de Hooge was completely destroyed along with the entire village; several large craters from underground mines were blown over the course of the 1917 The cemetery was begun in October 1917 by the 7th Division. Originally containing 76 graves, the cemetery was expanded by the concentration of graves from the surrounding battlefields and from nearby smaller cemeteries. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and has an unusual feature in the stone-faced circular depression at the entrance that evokes the nearby (and now lost) craters. Hooge Crater itself was filled in later in the war as the repository of hundreds of bodies and untenable. The existing water filled crater near the hotel is the result of Baron de Wynck, who landscaped three German mine crate
Size: 5224px × 3732px
Location: Hooge Crater Cemetery, Menenstraat, 8902 Ieper, Belgium
Photo credit: © Niall Ferguson / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: belgium, cemetery, crater, cwgc, front, graves, great, hooge, ieper, lutyens, poppies, poppy, war, western, wreath, ypres
