London WWI war cemetery

High Wood - real name in French Bois de Fourcaux, was the last of the major woods in the Somme offensive of 1916 to be captured by the British. Despite a whole series of attacks spanning two months, High Wood held out until September the 15th, 1916. It was scene of one of the fiercest battle and was never fully cleared after the war. It is estimated that the remains of around 8000 soldiers, British and German, still lie today in High Wood.

The original London Cemetery at High Wood was begun when 47 men of the 47th Division were buried in a large shell hole on 18 and 21 September 1916. Other burials were added later, mainly of officers and men of the 47th Division who died on 15 September 1916, and at the Armistice the cemetery contained 101 graves. The cemetery was then greatly enlarged when remains were brought in from the surrounding battlefields, but the original battlefield cemetery is preserved intact within the larger cemetery, now know as the London Cemetery and Extension. The cemetery, one of five in the immediate vicinity of Longueval which together contain more than 15,000 graves, is the third largest cemetery on the Somme with 3,872 First World War burials, 3,113 of them unidentified.

The London Cemetery and Extension was used again in 1946 by the Army Graves Service for the reburial of Second World War casualties recovered from various temporary burial grounds, French military cemeteries, small communal cemeteries, churchyards and isolated graves, where permanent maintenance was not possible. Second World War burials number 165.