In the early days of the war, whilst the front line was still mobile, specific cemeteries for soldiers were comparatively rare and the dead were often buried in local churchyards or municipal burial grounds near where they were killed.

[1] These 1914 burials of British and Canadian soldiers[2] reflect the mobility of the front line as they are largely of officers,[1] and reflect the officer class[3] of that point in the war as they were nobility[4] or the sons of the wealthy and the well-connected.

[5] The grounds of the war cemetery were assigned to the United Kingdom in perpetuity by King Albert I of Belgium in recognition of the sacrifices made by the British Empire in the defence and liberation of Belgium during the war.

[6] The Commonwealth War Graves Commission part of the cemetery was designed by W H Cowlishaw.

[7] The cemetery deviates from almost every other Commission burial ground by having two private memorials,[8] breaking the "equality in death"[9] principle the commission was founded under and not complying with Sir Frederic Kenyon's report, still otherwise followed to this day, that Commission cemeteries "were designed to avoid class distinctions that would conflict with the feeling of 'brotherhood' which had developed between all ranks serving at the Front".