3-021-456 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Crimea Revisited: graves of British soldiers, 1869. 'It is plain enough that if steps be not taken to preserve this cemetery from decay and from wanton dilapidation, it, in common with every monument and memorial in the Crimea, will become a national disgrace...The star on the Coldstream monument has been smashed into fragments, other stones are chipped and split, weeds and rank grass are growing up all over the stones...The burial-places of the Crimea are as much in ruins as Sebastopol itself...Of course, there is one great difficulty at the bottom of the whole case, and that is the number of these burial-grounds and the space they are spread over. No fewer than eighty-nine English burial-places were reported to me, extending over a space of about eighty square miles...There is a stone wall round each burial-ground...which prevents cattle or sheep from entering...The burial-ground which surmounts Cathcart Hill is by far the one in the best condition; but even this one has suffered...Below the Col, towards Balaklava, near the site where Mrs. Seacole had her quarters, is a burial-ground of the Land Transport Corps. A hawthorn-bush has taken root near the centre of it, and is flourishing'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.