Ocklynge Cemetery, Eastbourne, East Sussex.

Ocklynge Cemetery is located in Old Town, Eastbourne, East Sussex.

The Cross of Sacrifice designed by Reginald Bloomfield for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission stands at the main entrance to Ocklynge Cemetery. 130 casualties of the Great War lie randomly within the walls of the great cemetery.



In Ocklynge there are buried 18 officers and 112 other ranks. The Army has 107 burials, the Royal Navy 9 and the Royal Flying Corps 14.

42 of the burials in the cemetery have local connections and 17 of the men are soldiers who succumbed to wounds at the Central Military Hospital in Old Town. In fact, between January 1916 and July 1919 there were 16,000 admissions to the hospital, only 100 of these admissions succumbed to wounds or sickness.

The nationalities buried at Ocklynge:
South Africans 2
Canadians 8
Australians 6
New Zealander 1
Brazilian 1

The first military funeral at Ocklynge took place in October 1914. Private Edward William Langford of the 1st Battalion Befordshire Regiment he was 23. He enlisted in 1907 and was called up as a reservist in 1914. During the retreat from Mons he was wounded by sniper fire whilst resting in an orchard. His brother who was in the same battalion and a bandsman/stretcher bearer picked him up. Although he made it back to the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich he subsequently died. The family home was in Wellesley Road, near the town centre.
His brother was killed the following year at Ypres.