Stone

facility at Arras said:

“Portland Stone has been very important to us and has been for the last 100 years.

“We are conserving the stone rather than just replacing degraded stones, which means we are re-engraving many stones in situ.

“However, we still require around 4,000 headstones each year.

“Rather that than some 22,000 that we just replaced with any damage many years before.” n The trip was hosted by Visit Flanders.

During the First World War three battles were fought in Arras. The last major conflict was Passchendaele.

The memorial site of the Menin Gate was chosen because of the many thousands of soldiers who would have passed through on their way to the battlefields in this sector called the Ypres Salient or bulge.

It commemorates casualties from the military forces of Australia, Canada, India, South Africa and the United Kingdom who died.

The Ypres memorial bears the names of more than 54,000 officers and men whose graves are not known.

Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield the memorial was unveiled by Lord Plumer on July 24, 1927.

I stayed at the Albion Hotel in Ypres albionhotel.be/en