Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery Visitors Centre
John HartingtonRepresentatives from Bury Grammar School Boys have been specially invited to the opening of the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery visitor centre near Poperinge in Belgium in September 2012. Lijssenthoek is the second largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in Belgium with over 10,700 burials. One of these is Lieutenant John Hartington of the Lancashire Fusiliers (attached to the Machine Gun Corps) the 1914 Captain of Bury Grammar school, who was killed in an artillery bombardment on 13th July 1917 aged 21.
He had won the Military Cross in the fighting on the Somme the year before and had been awarded his medal by King George V shortly before his death. The construction of an interpretation centre at the cemetery is a reflection of the steadily growing number of visitors to the battlefields of the two world wars and follows the construction of similar visitor facilities at the Thiepval memorial to the Missing on the Somme and Tyne Cot Military Cemetery near Passchendaele. One of our old boys , Captain Austin Hudson, is featured in the audio-visual display at the Tyne Cot visitor centre.
The school provided a considerable amount of information about John Hartington to the organisers of the Lijssenthoek project when they were compiling the displays for the centre and a database of those buried there. As a result we have been invited to attend the official opening this year. Mr Hone will take a small group of sixth formers, all of them 'veterans' of several of our annual battlefield tours. Our plan is to stay in the historic Talbot House ('Toc H') in Poperinge, founded in 1915 by the Reverend 'Tubby' Clayton as a club for soldiers of all ranks and preserved today as a living museum.
