Sir,—The letter of Mr Leveson Gower in your issue last Monday [14 July] emboldens me to say that his idea of numbering the graves, and so doing away with the dull ranks of unlovely stones, must commend itself to all who in their travels abroad have noted the restful effect of treating the camp santo as a garden and allowing the names of the dead to be inscribed on the wall of the colonnade that surrounds the place of rest.  In the sketch plans that appeared of the future cemeteries which the War Graves Commission has in mind it was clear that a surrounding wall was part of the design.  It would be possible to utilise these walls for the names of the heroic dead, and a record of the exact spot of each grave could be kept at the caretaker’s lodge.  The general effect of the burial ground, without the monotonous headstones all to pattern, would be enhanced, and to prevent a like monotony freedom of choice of design on tablets of limited size might be granted to the relatives of those whose remains lie at rest in what could be made very “gardens of the Lord.”  Some years ago my old friend, Mr. G. F. Watts, the painter, talking on this subject, asked why we were so slow in adopting the Continental idea of the camp santo with its cloistral wall, and so saving our beautiful churchyards from the vulgarities and hideosities of the monument maker.

(Times, 21 July 1919, p. 8)