Hamilton Road Cemetery

Hamilton Road Cemetery is a combined municipal and military burial ground situated in the coastal town of Deal, Kent, in South East England. Opened in May 1856, it was created to provide a new burial ground for Deal at a time when its general population was expanding and when previous, often ad hoc facilities for dealing with deaths in the area no longer sufficed. The cemetery's civilian burials are managed by Dover Council, and its military burials by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It contains a Cross of Sacrifice of some significance and the burials of military service personnel from Great Britain, Belgium, Canada, and, very unusually, Nazi Germany, many of whom took part in some of the most famous incidents in World War I and World War II, including: the Gallipoli Campaign, the Battle of the Somme, the 1918 Zeebrugge Raid, the Battle of Dunkirk, the Battle of the Denmark Strait and sinking of HMS Hood, the Battle of Britain, and the more modern tragedy of the Deal barracks bombing in September 1989. It also contains 66 local civilian war dead from World War II killed by German bombing and shelling between 1940 and 1945, 127 military burials from World War I (including three unidentified Naval ratings), and 54 from World War II. There is a small mortuary chapel associated with the cemetery, but no dedicated church as such.