Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood

Zonnebeke, West-Vlaanderen

Location Information:

Buttes New British Cemetery is located 8 Kms east of Ieper town centre on the Lange Dreve, a road leading from the Meenseweg (N8) connecting Ieper to Menen. From Ieper town centre the Meenseweg is located via Torhoutstraat and right onto Basculestraat. Basculestraat ends at a main crossroads, directly over which begins the Meenseweg. 4.7 Kms along the Meenseweg, after the Bellewaerde theme park, lies the left hand turning onto Oude Kortrijkstraat. 2 Kms along the Oude Kortrijkstraat the road crosses the A19 motorway. Immediately after this bridge is the left hand turning onto the Lotegatstraat, which borders Polygon Wood. 800 meters along the Lotegatstraat is the right hand turning onto Lange Dreve. The Cemetery is located 1 Km along the Lange Dreve on the right hand side of the road.

Historical Information:

Polygon Wood (the "Polygone de Zonnebeke", or Polygoneveld)is a large wood south of the village of Zonnebeke which was completely devastated in the First World War. The wood was cleared by Commonwealth troops at the end of October 1914, given up on 3 May 1915, taken again at the end of September 1917 by Australian troops, evacuated in the Battles of the Lys, and finally retaken by the 9th (Scottish) Division on 28 September 1918. On the Butte itself is the Battle Memorial of the 5th Australian Division, who captured it on 26 September 1917. POLYGON WOOD CEMETERY is an irregular front-line cemetery made between August 1917 and April 1918, and used again in September 1918. A walled avenue leads from Polygon Wood Cemetery, past the Cross of Sacrifice, to the BUTTES NEW BRITISH CEMETERY. This burial ground was made after the Armistice when a large number of graves (almost all of 1917, but in a few instances of 1914, 1916 and 1918) were brought in from the battlefields of Zonnebeke. There are now 2,108 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in Buttes New British Cemetery. 1,677 of the burials are unidentified but special memorials are erected to 35 casualties known or believed to be buried among them. The BUTTES NEW BRITISH CEMETERY (NEW ZEALAND) MEMORIAL, which stands in Buttes New British Cemetery, commemorates 378 officers and men of the New Zealand Division who died in the Polygon Wood sector between September 1917 and May 1918, and who have no known grave. The cemeteries and memorial were designed by Charles Holden.