Page 201 - Who Was Sapper Brown

Nine Lost Burials

The 31st Fortress Company RE lost 16 men to illness or accident between July 1878 and May 1882, with
13 of them dying in 1878 and 1879.1 Only seven have identified graves (five in Troodos, one in Wayne’s

Keep and one in Nicosia British Cemetery), though the names of all 16 are recorded in the Muster Books
now kept in The National Archives (and in the Roll of Honour in this book, derived from these records).
2
Where were the others buried?

Besides the Muster Books, there are two intriguing mentions in the historical records of the deaths of

Royal Engineers in Cyprus in the first three years of the British occupation.

The first mention is by Lieutenant General Sir Garnet Wolseley, in his diary entry of Monday 26 August
1878, where he stated ‘A Sapper died here [Nicosia] the day before yesterday [24 Aug 1878] and the

Abbot here requested permission to bury him in his church hearing he was a protestant. He said he could
not have done so had he been a Catholic. Another Sapper died this morning [26 Aug] and another is, I

am afraid dying as I write this. Englishmen cannot stand this sun in tents... Today the thermometer in my
Mess tent [a hospital marquee] was 113o [Fahrenheit]. I shall be very glad when I can get the company

of R.E. away from this...’ 3

Wolseley had set up a tented camp in the beginning of August 1878 at the Metokhi of Saint Prokopios, a

small monastery owned by Kykko Monastery, surrounded by extensive farm lands about a mile beyond the
walls of Nicosia to the west of the city, after the Greek Orthodox Archbishop had induced the Abbot to let

him move in. Wolseley got on very well with the Abbot here, whom he called St Peter: ‘The old Abbot of the
monastery is a nice fellow with a long white beard and a very genial face: when I went over to his place today,

he presented me with a bouquet of flowers: I wrote in his room all day, a great luxury, for writing in a tent
in hot weather is always trying.’ 4

Metokhion Kykkou (Agios Prokopios, Nicosia) (facade dated 1861)

1 Army Medical Department Annual Reports (1878 – 1885)
2 Muster Books and Pay Lists of 31 Company Royal Engineers 1878 – 1879, 1879 – 1880, 1880 – 1881, 1882 – 1883. (The Na-
tional Archives: WO 16/879, WO 16/905, WO 16/931 & WO 16/981)

3 Cavendish, Anne, ed. (1991), Cyprus 1878 – The Journal of Sir Garnet Wolseley (Nicosia: Cyprus Popular Bank Cultural
Centre) (Referred to as ‘Wolseley Journal’), p. 60. (Journal entry for Monday 26 August 1878)
Ibid, p. 41. (Saturday 10 August 1878)

4 The Greek Orthodox do not bury their dead within churches, so Wolseley’s Journal entry recording the Abbot’s request to
bury the sappers ‘in his church’ should not be taken too literally. They may have been buried in the surrounding grounds

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