One of the joys I have taken away from the project – to photograph and research every First World War Commonwealth War Grave in Somerset – is discovering the hidden places that the county has to offer. When I started out, the whole county was new to me, but as Death and Service began to take shape, my eyes were opened to the villages and churches that were truly off the beaten track.
There are certainly some larger cemeteries across the county –St John’s and Wembdon Road in Bridgwater; St James’ and St Mary’s in Taunton; Locksbrook in Bath to name just five. But move away from the larger towns, divert from the main roads criss-crossing Somerset, and there are some definite gems to behold.
These smaller villages are hidden away in the depths of the countryside, and you end up crawling down narrow roads and tracks convinced that the Satnav has directed you down out of spite for all the times you have ignored her directions. Turn that last corner, however, and a peaceful church catches your eye.
Churches like these are havens of tranquillity. In the middle of nowhere, the only sounds you are likely to hear are the wind passing through the branches of the obligatory yew trees, the twittering of birds and the calls of livestock in the neighbouring fields. Burials marked by heavily weathered Georgian and Victorian gravestones are interspersed with modest memorials from more recent deaths. In these churchyards, with one of two Commonwealth War Graves, they become more obvious, the Portland stone immaculately presented against a backdrop of moss-covered crosses and partly toppled markers.
Away from these hidden churchyards, the county’s larger cemeteries present other challenges to the grave hunter. They sprawl over acres of land, the last resting places of hundreds, or thousands of people. Locksbrook Cemetery in Bath and Milton Road Cemetery in Weston-super-Mare are particularly hilly, affording those laid to rest in their grounds a view over the places they had known well – or not at all.
In these places of burial, the humble Commonwealth War Grave is harder to spot. Where the relatives of the deceased had a family plot – or chose against the regimented CWGC design – tracking down a specific headstone becomes more of an adventure. Some cemeteries have plans available online, but the records for other are not so complete.
Where a grave is not identifiable, another website – findagrave.com – sometimes holds a clue to its location. Not specifically a military site, it is run by volunteers, and allows you to search for a person’s burial. Where there are results, these will usually include name, date of death and grave plot details. Where the deceased has a military connection, the site often takes service information from the CWGC records.
Depending on the information available, the website allows details about the deceased’s parents and any spouse to be added, provided that their burial locations are also known. This then gives the visitor a bit more family background, which can help when carrying out research on the person who has passed. It also gives a vital link where, for example, siblings are buried on other sides of the world.
In the middle of a sweeping cemetery, however, the most important clue is a photograph of the grave itself. Not every entry includes an image, but where one has been uploaded, it adds that vital missing link to the hunt for the headstone. That doesn’t mean that a cemetery can necessarily be covered in one go and, in the case of Locksbrook and Milton Road, it took me four attempts to get a photo of every headstone I wanted to record.
Death and Service 