Canterbury Cemetery

Canterbury Cemetery;  (27 burials) was so named from the fact that the majority of the burials in it are of men of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles.

Location Information

The Anzac and Suvla cemeteries are first signposted from the left hand junction of the Eceabat- Bigali road. From this junction travel into the main Anzac area.

After 11.6kms. the cemetery will be found on your right.

Visiting Information

The Cemetery is permanently open and may be visited at any time.

Please note that in the absence of a cemetery register, visitors are advised to locate the Grave/Memorial reference before visiting. This information can be found in the CASUALTY RECORDS within this page.

Historical Information

The eight month campaign in Gallipoli was fought by Commonwealth and French forces in an attempt to force Turkey out of the war, to relieve the deadlock of the Western Front in France and Belgium, and to open a supply route to Russia through the Dardanelles and the Black Sea.

The Allies landed on the peninsula on 25-26 April 1915; the 29th Division at Cape Helles in the south and the Australian and New Zealand Corps north of Gaba Tepe on the west coast, an area soon known as Anzac.

Canterbury Cemetery is one of the central cemeteries in Anzac and was made after the Armistice. It contains the graves of 27 Commonwealth Servicemen of the First World War, five of them unidentified. 20 of the graves are of men of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles (mostly the Canterbury Mounted Rifles).