Page 107 - Who Was Sapper Brown

When By whom the ceremony
Name
Abode
Age
buried
was performed

John Dickenson Quarter Limassol
8 May 36 years Ronald McLeod, Chaplain to

(?) –Master, Sergeant 1882
and 209 HM forces on Probate
6230 Supernumerary Staff days

Royal Engineers

How come this Royal Engineer sergeant was buried in a Greek-Cypriot cemetery rather than in a military
cemetery, and which cemetery exactly was he buried in?

The answer to the first question is straightforward–there was no military cemetery in existence in

Limassol at this time. The British Cemetery at Polemidia, just outside Limassol, was only consecrated
by the Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar in late 1882, with the first burial there being of 27 year old Sergeant

James Adams of the 1st Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment on 22 October 1882, five months after

Sergeant Dickenson died.

The old Greek civilian cemetery of St Nicholas was the only Christian cemetery in Limassol in the 19th
century, with the occasional tombstone surviving from the 18th century.

The Orthodox Church had no qualms about burying Protestants in its cemeteries and in the absence of

a British military cemetery the British military chaplain would also have been happy with this interim
arrangement. Sergeant John Dickenson would therefore have been buried at St Nicholas Cemetery,

which for ease of reference would have been recorded as the ‘Greek Cemetery Limassol’ in the official
military register.

Lost

The author visited the densely crowded Greek cemetery of Saint Nicholas in Limassol on two occasions

in April 2013, but was unable to identify Sergeant Dickenson’s grave.

And Found

Other British burials The author did however find and identify ten old British graves there, dating
between 1879 and 1914, of five adults and five children or infants. They are situated relatively near one

another in the oldest section of the cemetery, some thirty metres within and to the left of the old entrance
shown in the photo above. None of the adults is identifiably military. These graves all appeared somewhat

forlorn at the time of the author’s visit.

The three earliest graves (1879 – 1880) are all of young children, at least one of whom, Violet Amelia
Brightwell, who died on 23 October 1880 at the age of 6 years 9 months, was certainly born to a military

family. Her father was Charles Brightwell, of the 35th Royal Sussex Regiment, and he went on to become a

Sergeant Major in the regiment. 2 Violet was the only child of a military family in Cyprus to die that year.3

2 Website: My Genealogy Home Page. Charles Brightwell was born on the 14th March 1847 in Angel Gard, St.Peters
in the East, Oxford, and died date unknown in Egypt as a Sergeant Major. He married Lydia Marshall Dodson on the 7th

March 1870 in St.Giles Parish Church, Colchester, Essex. They lost three children overseas, including young Violet.
3 Army Medical Department Annual Report (1880)

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