Houplines Communal Cemetery Extension

Houplines was in Allied hands (but near the front line) from 17 October 1914, when it was taken by the 4th Division. It fell into German hands in April 1918 during their great advance, but was recovered in September. The village contained four Commonwealth cemeteries in addition to plots in the communal cemetery, but the graves were regrouped after the war and only two cemeteries remain.

Houplines Communal Cemetery Extension was begun, as "Houplines New Military Cemetery" in October 1914 and used until January, 1916, mainly by the 4th and 6th Divisions. It was enlarged after the Armistice when graves were brought in from the battlefields round Armentieres and the following burial grounds:-

FERME PHILIPPEAUX BRITISH CEMETERY, HOUPLINES, at Le Ruage, near the South-East side of the road to Frelinghien, between the Chateau and the farm. It contained the graves of 75 soldiers from the United Kingdom (who fell mainly in October, 1914, and June-July, 1915); almost all belonged to the 2nd Seaforths or the 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers. The 2nd Seaforths captured the farm in October, 1914.
HOUPLINES COMMUNAL CEMETERY, where 71 United Kingdom soldiers were buried, in two plots, in October, 1914 - October, 1915. Plot I, the larger, was made chiefly by the 1st East Yorks and the 1st West Yorks in the spring of 1915.
HOUPLINES OLD MILITARY CEMETERY, on the North-Eastern edge of the village, in which 235 United Kingdom soldiers and one French civilian were buried in December, 1914 - December, 1915, and September and October, 1918.
RUE-MARLE CEMETERY, LA CHAPELLE-D'ARMENTIERES (next to a new Church just outside Armentieres on the Bois-Grenier road), where 27 United Kingdom soldiers (mainly of the 5th Cameronians) and two Canadian were buried in 1915.
FERME BUTERNE MILITARY CEMETERY is on the West side of the rebuilt Ferme de la Buterne, nearly a mile South-East of the village. It was used (chiefly by the 6th Division) from January to October, 1915; and it contains the graves of 128 soldiers from the United Kingdom and one from Canada. Fifty of the dead belonged to the 2nd Leinster Regiment, 21 to the 2nd London and 20 to the 1st North Staffs.

The extension contains 535 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War. 68 burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to four casualties known or believed to be buried among them. Another special memorial records the name of a soldier buried in Houplines Old Military Cemetery whose grave was destroyed by shell fire. The cemetery also contains one Second World War burial.