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Ripon Cemetery

  • Country United Kingdom
  • Total identified casualties 189 Find these casualties
  • Region Yorkshire
  • Identified casualties from First & Second World War
  • GPS Coordinates Latitude: 54.14166, Longitude: -1.53637

History information

During the two world wars, the United Kingdom became an island fortress used for training troops and launching land, sea and air operations around the globe. There are more than 170,000 Commonwealth war graves in the United Kingdom, many being those of servicemen and women killed on active service, or who later succumbed to wounds. Others died in training accidents, or because of sickness or disease. The graves, many of them privately owned and marked by private memorials, will be found in more than 12,000 cemeteries and churchyards.

During the First World War, Ripon Military Hospital contained 670 beds, and served the military camps at Ripon. Ripon Cemetery contains 122 scattered burials from this period.

In 1940 the School of Military Engineering was transferred to Ripon, where it remained for the duration of the war, the Yorkshire dales becoming an important military training centre. However, the majority of the Second World War burials in the cemetery are those of airmen from airfields in the locality, the R.A.F. Station at Dishforth being only a few miles distant. The headquarters of No. 6 (R.C.A.F.) Bomber Group was at Allerton Park near Knaresborough and many of the Canadian airmen buried here came from the Royal Canadian Air Force Station at Leeming, a base from which Canadian heavy bomber squadrons carried out their night attacks over enemy occupied Europe. The Canadian training base headquarters of No. 6 Group was at Topcliffe. After 1943 most of the airmen who died in this district were buried in the regional cemetery at Harrogate.

Most of the 59 Second World War burials form a war graves plot in Section H. The plot also contains five German war graves.