A rare and precious thing.....

[gurkharifles]

I was checking "my" war graves today for storm damage ( all present and correct thankfully) - however in Abbots Leigh - I managed to pop into the Church itself for the first time ( always been locked before ) - a very typical small English parish church - expect at the back of the Church just propped up in a corner were these two wooden grave markers. The larger one was to L Corporal Stanley Herbert Hall 7th Btn Somerset Light Infantry - Killed 7.6.17 and the smaller more basic one was to J W Gittings 1st Btn Hertfordshire Regiment killed 17.July 1916. These wooden grave markers were erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission in France - when the permanent stone headstones were being erected in the 1920's - families were given an option to purchase the original wooden grave markers - ( very few did ) - those that did were given an uncleaned cross "with the mud of France still on it". I've not seen many of these before and their can't be many that have survived.