Bramshott War Memorial

Bramshott is a small village on the A3 Portsmouth Road that has a stunning war memorial that is best viewed in Autumn.

It consists of 400 maple trees imported from Canada that line each side of the A3 and during October, provide an eye popping display of reds, yellows and deep russet brown leaves that are easily visible as you hurtle past.

Each tree corresponds to a grave of a Canadian serviceman buried in the local churchyards of St. Mary’s, Bramshott and St Joseph's in the nearby village of Grayshott.

During World War I and World War II, tens of thousands of Canadian volunteer soldiers came to England and the surrounding area was one of the largest training areas, although many of those buried died as a result of the Spanish Flu pandemic just after the end of WWI.

I also stopped off in Bramshott to visit the graves which are tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and was struck by how peaceful they looked, with small spruce bushes planted between the headstones and again, vibrant splashes of colour provided by acer trees dotted around.

Interestingly Bramshott is claimed to be the most haunted villages in England with 17 alleged ghosts including that of Boris Karloff, the famous actor who played the monster in the Frankenstein films in the 1930s and who lived and died there in 1969.