Sint-Elooi

Sint-Elooi is a small village, about 5 km (3.1 mi) south of Ypres in the Flemish province of West Flanders in Belgium.

The village takes its name from Saint Eligius (also Eloy or Loye, French: Éloi, c. 588–660 who worked for twenty years to convert the pagan population of Flanders to Christianity.

[3] The geology of the Ypres Salient featured a characteristic layer of sandy clay, which put very heavy pressures of water and wet sand on the underground works and made deep mining extremely difficult.

[6][3] However, the accompanying British infantry operation was a failure; the problem lay in the Allied inability to hold crater positions after they had been captured.

Twenty-six deep mines were eventually dug by Tunnelling companies of the Royal Engineers, most of which were detonated simultaneously on 7 June 1917, creating 19 large craters.

The brick plinth bears transparent plaques with details of the mining activities by 172nd Tunnelling Company and an extract from the poem Trenches: St Eloi by the war poet T.E.