Amery Hill School pupils led by assistant headteacher Bethan Pretsell joined former Curtis Museum curator Tony Cross to spruce up Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones in Alton Cemetery.

For many of the past 25 years Mr Cross, a retired member of staff at the school, has been accompanied by volunteer pupils to give the memorials at the cemetery behind the school a scrub before Remembrance Day and to place a small Cross of Remembrance by them. This year’s ceremony took place on October 24.

Almost all of the fighting in the First and Second World Wars took place overseas, but there are 160,000 Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones in the UK.

Casualties buried in the UK include personnel killed in training accidents, those who suffered injuries on European battlefields and died in British military hospitals - there was a Red Cross Hospital in the Alton Assembly Rooms during the First World War - and victims of Second World War air battles in Britain’s skies.

Mr Cross said: “Within both sections of Alton Cemetery there are eight burials relating to the First World War and 14 associated with the Second World War.

“In addition there is a private memorial chosen by one Second World War family, and several family headstones of both wars that include family members lost overseas. Three family headstones included the small bronze memorial plaque issued to families who had lost members after the First World War, although only one is still in place.

“Mounted on the low wall of the Crematorium Memorial area at the top of the cemetery are two small plaques. One commemorates two women from the town who died in south-east Asia during the Second World War, while the other remembers the four civilians who died due to enemy bombs falling on Alton in March 1941.”