Today I set out to visit gardens, but as I walked towards Priory Gardens in Orpington I passed the cemetery of All Saints Church and noticed a War Cemetery.
Orpington Hospital opened in 1916 as the Ontario Military Hospital to care for soldiers injured in the Great War. Canada sent 560,000 men and women to the war and many, apparently, came from Ontario, hence the name. The hospital was one of the best at the time; 30,000 patients were treated but there are ‘only’ 129 graves from WWI, the majority of which are Canadian.
You may be interested in
Orpington Military Hospital
The Hospital and the Cemetery
Candy Blackham
Thank you. I looked up the War Graves Commission site – there are a frightening number of cemetries in South East London which include WWI and WWII graves. Perhaps we do forget…
runner500
Interesting post – there were around 50 temporary hospitals around what is now the Borough of Bromley during WW1 – in some surprising locations – I did a blog piece on a few of them last autumn (https://runner500.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/bromleys-world-war-1-auxiliary-home-hospitals/) so guess it is not surprising that a lot of soldiers never recovered and are buried in the borough. There must be several other similar memorials in other cemeteries in Bromley.