Free website has interactive panoramas of WW1 cemeteries
A retired artist has launched a new website allowing family historians to explore 360-degree photographic panoramas of the First World War Commonwealth cemeteries where their family members are buried.
Howard Wood, from Wakefield, told Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine that he was inspired to create ww1monumenta.com after a visit to Adelaide Cemetery in France in 2013, during which he met an Australian father and son who were visiting a relative’s grave and taking multiple photographs.
“It was for the relatives who couldn’t make it,” he said. “There must be thousands of people like that, who would like to go and have a look but can’t.”
Wood spent two weeks in France and Belgium every year between 2014 and 2018, photographing the cemeteries.
Photos of 500 cemeteries are now available on the website, as moving panoramas that the viewer can navigate. Wood has 200 more to add, and plans to photograph up to 250 more.
He also plans to add 3D stereoscopic photographs, and hopes to make the website accessible for users of tablets and smartphones.