Hooge Crater Museum

Small private museum near the spot where British troops first deployed flamethrowers in 1915

About 4 km east of Ypres on the Menin Road, Hooge Crater Museum is a private collection of First World War artefacts housed in a former chapel on the Passchendaele battlefield. The collection is extensive: uniforms, weapons, personal effects, unexploded ordnance, and thousands of smaller objects recovered from the surrounding fields since 1918. The nearby Hooge Crater Cemetery — created around the shell crater from a mine explosion in July 1915 — sits in the grounds.

The museum is particularly good on the technological innovations of the Ypres Salient: the first use of poison gas, the first use of flamethrowers on the Western Front, the development of tunnel warfare. The surrounding landscape, flat and seemingly agricultural, conceals the scale of what happened here. A visit to Hooge combined with Sanctuary Wood (Hill 62) a short drive away makes for a full morning in this part of the battlefield.

things to do museum war memorial
A story
On 30 July 1915, German troops used flamethrowers against British soldiers at Hooge for the first time in the war on the Western Front — a weapon that had been deployed on the Eastern Front but was new to the Ypres Salient. The attack caused widespread panic and significant casualties before a counterattack restored the British position. The Germans had captured the château at Hooge several weeks earlier by exploding a mine under it.

Other places in Things to Do