Tyne Cot Cemetery

Occupying part of the strategic high ground from which the Germans looked down across the Allied forces and itself an historic site from the Battle of Passchendaele, Tyne Cot is the largest Commonwealth War Cemetery in the world. It is also New Zealand's largest cemetery beyond New Zealand's shores.

Within its flint walls are the graves of almost 12,000 casualties from World War One, 8,300 of them unidentified. The entire rear of the cemetery is occupied by a curved Memorial, commemorating a further 35,000 soldiers who have no known graves. In total the cemetery covers an area of 34,941 square metres.

There are 520 graves of New Zealanders, 322 unidentified. The New Zealand Apse in the Memorial commemorates a further 1,166 New Zealanders who have no known grave. In addition, there is another New Zealand Memorial to the Missing in the immediate vicinity - at Buttes, Polygon Wood, close to Zonnebeke. The third is at Messines.

The British names on the Tyne Cot Memorial are inscribed as a direct extension of the Menin Gate which records the names of the missing up to August 14, 1917. The New Zealand names on this and other New Zealand Memorials to the Missing are in part a result of this but mainly the result of a New Zealand Government decision at the time to honour the country's dead close to the point where they fell. While Messines is the New Zealand focus on Anzac Day in Belgium, Tyne Cot is the Australian focus. The Menin Gate is the combined Anzac focus.

The name

Although the exact reason for its name is sometimes disputed, it seems to be that "Tyne Cot" was the name given by British soldiers from Tyneside to a cottage on the Passchendaele-Broodseinde road which was surrounded by German pill-boxes. On Allied maps it was first written as "Tyne Cott." and later abbreviated further to Tyne Cot.

The largest of these pillboxes was captured by the 3rd Australian Division on October 4, 1917, in the Battle of Broodseinde, the advance on Passchendaele. The Cross of Sacrifice is erected on the pillbox and there are other remaining pillboxes within the grounds of the cemetery.

The large pillbox was used as an advanced dressing station and from shortly after its capture until April the following year, when re-taken by the Germans, the vicinity became a cemetery. On September 18, 1918, it was recaptured together with the village of Passchendaele by the Belgian Army.

Following the Armistice a number of graves from the surrounding area were concentrated at Tyne Cot. The original graves are those closest to the Cross of Sacrifice. Sir Herbert Baker, the architect who designed the house for Cecil Rhodes and whish is now the official residence of the President of South Africa, designed the cemetery and wall.

 The Seraphim Choir of Chilton Saint James School, Lower Hutt, singing on
  the steps of the Stone of Remembrance at Tyne Cot immediately prior to
 the International Ecumenical Service attended by HM The Queen, HRH The
               Duke of Edinburgh and HRH Queen Paola of the Belgians.
                                                          (Photo: Di Mackey)
Tyne Cot has been a place of pilgrimage since the 1920s and today is visited by quarter of a million people a year, including considerable numbers of school pupils from the UK and other countries.

Access from the Zonnebeke-Passchendaele road via two narrow lanes, limited parking and a lack of any sort of facilities led to a local initiative to construct a Visitor Centre and coach park in 2006. Now completed and mostly out of sight behind the Memorial Wall, the centre was officially opened by HM The Queen during the Passchendaele and Menin Gate Commemorations on Thursday, July 12, this year.