Page 202 - Who Was Sapper Brown

Wolseley does not record the outcome of the Abbot’s request nor where the sappers were buried.
Nonetheless, it is very likely that Wolseley did indeed give permission to his friend the Abbot to bury

them, within the precincts of the Monastery of Saint Prokopios (Metokhion Kykkou), and this would
have set a precedent.5 The Muster Books record that four sappers died in Nicosia in 1878 (none in 1879)

and their graves are now lost – were they buried here?

There are many new buildings around the Monastery church, and the gardens have been extensively

landscaped in recent years, so it is impossible to trace where their graves may have been. The author has
not had access to any monastery archives, and there are no memorials to any British soldiers within the

Monastery grounds. An informal enquiry at the Monastery in April 2013 elicited the response that there
had been no graves evident when the gardens were landscaped.

Once Nicosia British Cemetery was consecrated in 1880, with Sapper Joseph Crompton being the first

burial, there would have been no further burials elsewhere in Nicosia.

Gardens of Metokhion Kykkou (probable site of burial of four sappers in 1878)

The second mention is in the War Office files in The National Archives at Kew, where there is a register

of burials that intriguingly lists a solitary military burial at the Greek Cemetery Limassol, of a Royal

Engineer, Sergeant John Dickenson, who died on 8 May 1882.6 He was buried in this civilian cemetery
because the Polemidia British Cemetery had not yet been consecrated, the first burial in Polemidia being

on 22 October 1882. Some of the details of John Dickenson’s exact rank are difficult to decipher in the
handwritten record:

5 Register of Burials at Limassol, Troodos, Polimedia, p. 200. (The National Archives: WO 156/106)
6 Major Sir John Eugene Clauson was Lieutenant-Governor and Chief Secretary of Malta from 1911 – 1914.

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