Aldershot Military Cemetery

Aldershot Military Cemetery is a burial ground for military personnel, or ex-military personnel. It is located in Aldershot Military Town, Hampshire. The Cemetery is also open for the interment of husbands, wives and children of all ranks, and for some civilians who have spent their working life with the army.The Cemetery lies between Thorn Hill and Peaked Hill, and is bordered to the south by Ordnance Road. Entrance is from Gallwey Road, near where the old time-gun stood, and from Ordnance Road.It is unlike any other military cemetery in the United Kingdom, for not only is it set on hills and small valleys in natural surrounds, but here, at rest, lie nearly 17,000 fighting men of nine nations. There are 692 First World War graves in the cemetery; the earliest bears the date 5 August 1914, and the latest 11 August 1921. Many of these graves are in plot AF. The 129 Second World War graves are in groups in various plots, the largest group in plot A containing 86 graves.Early historyThe Cemetery was first enclosed in 1856, and although a number of soldiers were buried on the site prior to that year, soldiers and their families were interred in the churchyard of the village parish church of St Michael the Archangel in nearby Aldershot before the cemetery opened.In 1870 the cemetery became the responsibility of the senior Royal Engineers Officer in "The Camp." The Protestant portion of the cemetery was consecrated by Samuel Wilberforce, the then Bishop of Winchester, on 1 November 1870.