I have posted about Overleigh Cemetery Chester, before. These are all graves within the cemetery of casualties of the Great War:-

Private L C Woolley, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, 16/4/1919:-

Private J Lawrence, Royal Lancaster Regiment, 20/12/1915, aged 33:-

Private H Jones, Cheshire Regiment, 15/11/1918, aged 45:-

Private C Nuttall, Cheshire Regiment, 4/11/1918, aged 29:-

Pioneer C H Webb, Royal Engineers, 11/9/1918, aged 24:-

Serjeant Major J W T Francis, Cheshire Regiment, 25/5/1915, aged 27:-

Gunner R T Ryder, Royal Field Artillery, 20/4/1915, aged 20:-

Corporal H Cooper, Cheshire Regiment, 4/1/1917, aged 44:-

Boy A Burton, Cheshire Regiment, 19/2/1918, aged 17:-

Corporal J Warburton, Royal Engineers, 21/2/1917, aged 44:-

Private H H J Martin, Cheshire Regiment, 3/11/1918, aged 30:-

Private T Z Stephenson, Royal Engineers, 7/7/1915, aged 32:-

Captain Thomas Arthur Ellis, RAF, 20/11/1918, aged 25:-

Pioneer A Sutton, Royal Engineers, 17/5/1920, aged 50:-

Private T Jenkins, Welsh Regiment, 30/8/1915, aged 18:-

Private E R Noakes, Machine Gun Corps (Cavalry,) 26/4/1920:-

Sapper W H Turton, Royal Engineeers, 3/6/1918:-

I have posted several times previously about Overleigh Cemetery Chester. I photographed several World War 2 graves there.

Warrant Officer K Buckingham, Pilot, RAF, 7/9/1944, aged 23:-

Aircraftman 2nd Class W Ledsham, RAF, 23/2/1940:-

Corporal A Henshall, Royal Engineers, 5/12/1944, aged 28:-

Leading Seaman J D H Gibson, Royal Navy, 25/5/1945, aged 30:-

Guardsman T E Mallard, Grenadier Guards, 9/7/1944:-

Aircraftman W J Wilding, RAF, 14/2/1942:-

For more general views of Overleigh Cemetery, see here.

It’s unusual in the UK for two soldiers to be commemorated on the one headstone. (It is much more common in the battlefield War Cemeteries in Belgium and France.)

There were two such paired burials in Overleigh though.

Gunner W Jones, Royal Garrison Artillery, 5/11/1918, aged 35 and Driver A Wildman, Royal Field Artillery, 6/11/1918:-

Private R Jones, Cheshire Regiment, 19/10/1915, aged 21, and Private C H McLaren, Cheshire Regiment, 12/10/1915, aged 43:-

Private A Waterfall, West Yorkshire Regiment, 26/7/1916, and Private E T Morris, Cheshire Regiment, 22/5/1916:-

Private J Williams, Royal Welch Fusiliers, 15/6/1921, aged 29, and Private F Dale, Manchester Regiment, 16/1/1921.

Bombardier C Pearce, Royal Field Artillery, 13/7/1920, aged 32, and, in background, F Williams, The King’s Liverpool Regiment, 2/6/1920, aged 20:-

Another striking sight in Overleigh Cemetery, Chester was the presence of a Bulgarian Flag on a church within the grounds.

This turned out to be St Barbara’s, a Greek Orthodox Church, and the building is the former cemetery chapel.

The inside is sumptuous and full of iconography:-

The vaulted roof is a bit less ornate though:-

The main (more modern) Overleigh Cemetery in Chester, though its Wiki page says it’s on Grosvenor Road, lies just across Overleigh Road from Overleigh ‘Old’ Cemetery.

Overleigh Cemetery (without the ‘Old’) contains 197 Commonwealth War Graves. The most striking feature (in a War Memorial sense) is the Cross of Sacrifice. It is inscribed, “This Cross Of Sacrifice is one in design and intention with those which have been set up in France and Belgium and other places throughout the world where our dead of the Great War are laid to rest: their name liveth for evermore.”

It is unusual for any municipal cemetery in the United Kingdom to have a Cross of Sacrifice. Most, of course, have fewer than the minimum number of graves (30) to qualify for one. In this regard Overleigh’s 197 must surely be an outlier.

There are many indivdual war graves in Overleigh but the photographs below are of clusters or scatterings of graves:-