Two Belgians buried at Sale, Cheshire

The story below and accompanying pictures came to us via the kind attention of Michael Riley, parish archivist at St Paul's Parish Church, Sale, Cheshire M33 7YA.

Sale Old Hall, now demolished, was a hospital for Belgian casualties. Belgian refugees were also treated there.

 Sale Old Hall

Two Belgian men died and were buried in the parish at Sale, Brooklands Cemetery.

A memorial was erected by members of the Sale Belgian Refugee Committee.

Carl Rylent (1865 - 1915) was originally from Antwerp and was locally known as Charles.

Theophile Van Hende (1882 - 1916) was from Antwerp as well.

Although the OCR is at times rather robust, no reference to either man was retrieved via the online database of Belgian wartime newspapers at hetarchief.be (no Rylent, no Theophile in Cheshire for the period Sep-Oct-Nov 1916). Also, today's yellow pages in Belgium do not hold any single Rylent either.

The above pictures may be of interest to descendants or at least descendants of family members of either.


(Unrelated but intriguing. The 1878 Cheshire Post Office Directory mentions the following: "The history of Cheshire in the Iberian, Celtic and Belgian periods is almost a blank.")