Essex Farm Cemetery

Essex Farm Cemetery is a World War I, Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground within the John McCrae Memorial Site near Ypres, Belgium.

The cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield and has an area of 6,032 square metres (64,930 sq ft).

In the northwest corner of the site is the Cross of Sacrifice, on the east side of the Stone of Remembrance.

The cemetery was established next to a dressing station established by the Canadian Field Artillery during the Second Battle of Ypres, on farmland which was unnamed on pre-war maps; the dressing station was operational from early 1915 until 1918.

[2] A monument in the cemetery commemorates the composition of the war poem In Flanders Fields which is reported to have been written in May 1915 by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae MD, after witnessing the burial of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, of the 2nd Battery, 1st Brigade Canadian Field Artillery, at Essex Farm; Helmer's grave is now lost.