Hyde Park Corner (Royal Berks) Cemetery

Hyde Park Corner (Royal Berks)
Hyde Park Corner (Royal Berks)
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
	Used for those deceased April 1915 – November 1917
Established	1915
Location	50°44′16″N 02°52′59″E / 50.73778°N 2.88306°E; near Ploegsteert, Hainaut, Belgium
Designed by	H Chalton Bradshaw
Total burials	87
Burials by nation
	Allied Powers: United Kingdom: 81; Canada: 1; Australia: 1; Central Powers: Germany: 4;
Burials by war
	World War I: 87
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Official name	Funerary and memory sites of the First World War (Western Front)
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, ii, vi
Designated	2023 (45th session)
Reference no.	1567-WA09
	Statistics source: WW1cemeteries.com

Hyde Park Corner (Royal Berks) Cemetery is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) burial ground in Belgium for the dead of the First World War, located in the village of Ploegsteert in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front.

This small cemetery is not to be confused with the much larger Berks Cemetery Extension, which is also the site of the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing. Both of these are located directly opposite, across the road.

History

This small cemetery was originally set up by 1st and 4th Royal Berkshire Regiment troops in April 1915. The cemetery later expanded across the road, where the Berks Cemetery Extension was built,^[1] and which now also houses the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing.

The cemetery grounds were assigned to the United Kingdom in perpetuity by King Albert I of Belgium in recognition of the sacrifices made by the British Empire in the defence and liberation of Belgium during the war.

The current appearance of the cemetery was designed by H. Chalton Bradshaw, who also designed the Cambrai Memorial in France.^[2]

Hyde Park Corner cemetery contains the graves of 87 soldiers, both from the Allied Powers and the Central Powers. The burials include:

Ronald Poulton-Palmer, who was a well-known rugby union footballer, who captained England in the 1913–1914 season, and played in the last test match before the outbreak of war. He was killed by a sniper in May 1915, while serving a lieutenant in the Royal Berkshire Regiment.^[3]
Albert French, who was a 16-year-old soldier from Wolverton, Buckinghamshire, England. The finding of his letters from the war was one of the reasons why Ploegsteert, as part of Comines-Warneton, was declared a sister city of Wolverton in 2006.
Samuel McBride of the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Rifles. He was executed for desertion on 7 December 1916.^[4] It is now felt by many that these "shot at dawn" men were unfairly tried and executed as they may have been suffering from combat stress reaction rather than acting in cowardice.^[5]