Tyne Cot Cemetery - Passendale - Belgium

As a third and last one in my current Belgian Architecture blog-series, we visit today the, largest Commonwealth Cemetery of World War I and II.

Tyne Cot Cemetery
About 9 kilometers north east of Ieper (Ypres), just outside the small village of Passendale, we find the Tyne Cot cemetery. A resting place of nearly 12000 British, Australian, Canadian, New-Zealand, South-African and French, World War I soldiers and strangely enough also 4 German soldiers.
Tyne Cot Cemetery
Historians do not really agree about the origin of the name "Tyne Cot". The most probably one seems to be that on the site of the present cemetery, a cottage used to stand. The British soldiers abbreviated the word cottage to 'Cot' and coupled it with the name of the river Tyne in Northern-England.
Tyne Cot Cemetery
In the Ypres area there are numerous war cemeteries from different nations, a large part being British. This is not only the largest one, it is also the most impressive one.
Tyne Cot Cemetery
One doesn't immediately think about Architecture when visiting a cemetery, but the layout is very well thought off and surely worth a look at if you are in the neighborhood. A new modern visitors center was opened by Queen Elisabeth on July 12th 2007.


Happy shooting,

Bjorn





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