(The title comes from Aristocrats by Keith Douglas, one of the greatest war poets of all time. He was killed in the Normandy invasion in June 1944.) 

Comrades in arms became comrades in death and a small Somerset church honours a worthy triumvirate from the WW1 battlefields : Edward Horner, Siegfried Sassoon and Raymond Asquith. 

The quintessential English village of Mells lies to the west of the attractive market town of Frome. From mesolithic flint making and neolithic settlements to Roman camps and Saxon villages it has a long history. 

The name is actually derived from the French ‘meaulnes’ or mills, from the large number of mills once used for dyeing and carding wool.

Glastonbury Abbey built much of the medieval town and in the 16th century the Horners arrived, buying the lands in 1543 that had been dissolved by Henry VIIIth. 

Over the following centuries, the Horners became an intrinsic part of the village. Around the early 20th century Sir John and Frances Horner commissioned such luminaries as the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, the stone Mason Eric Gill  and craftsmen such as Edward Burne Jones, William Morris, William Nicholson and Alfred Munnings.

A visit to the church, which dates back to the late 15th century will reveal much of their work and some fine memorials.

Edward Horner

On entering the church under a superb fan  ceiling, one is immediately confronted by a fine equestrian statue by Alfred Munnings, the celebrated artist. This is only one of two sculptures he made (the other is at Ascot racecourse) and commemorates Edward Horner, the eldest son of John and Frances, who died in France at the age of 28, on 21st November 1917, from wounds received at Noyelles. He is actually buried in Rocquigny-Equancourt Road British Cemetery.

Only the previous month, he had visited his parents on compassionate leave after Mells Park was burnt down. His younger brother had died of scarlet fever at the age of 16 in 1908 – one can only imagine what the family suffered at this latest death. 

A gilded youth and part of the Coterie (although he hadn’t excelled academically much to his mother’s disappointment) he had been educated at Eton and then Balliol where he joined the Officers Training Corps, that great supplier of WW1 cannon fodder. 

Called to the Bar, he was nevertheless impatient to enlist and after a brief stint in the Somerset Yeomanry who, he complained, took his two best hunters and his manservant, he joined the 18th Hussars and left for France in early 1915.

By February 1915, he had been injured by shrapnel, losing a kidney and spending the summer at Mells to recuperate. He went back to duty in December 1915 and despite being eligible for a desk job due to his previous injury, was soon in the front line again. 

The equestrian statue stands on a solid Portland stone plinth by Lutyens which displays the original grave marker at one end and the family crest to the other.  To one side is the quote from Adonais by Shelley:  “He hath outsoared the shadow of our night.” 

Looking at the fine Thoroughbred lines of the horse and its rider, seemingly gazing over some distant battlefield, the poem Aristocrats by Keith Douglas springs more to my mind. 

Catch the statue in the soft late-in-the-day light, outlined starkly against the stained glass windows and there is indeed something immortal about it – indeed, ironically, in his death and the creation of this statue, Edward has probably achieved the immortality he would never have had with a conventional life.

Raymond Asquith 

Around the corner lies another more subtle memorial, again by Lutyens, but this time a simple wreath and writing on a wall. This one honours Raymond Asquith, eldest son and one of 7 children of the prime minister Herbert Asquith, who married Edward’s sister, Katherine, in 1907.

Raymond was a brilliant scholar and another barrister. One of his more notable cases involved the Titanic inquest. His golden future was curtailed by war: it would appear that he harboured few illusions and went to war more from a sense of duty than any real enthusiasm. 

However, instead of staying in his initial desk job (during which he defended an officer accused of consorting with the enemy at the Christmas Day truce), he joined his regiment, the Grenadier Guards, on the front line and was duly shot leading his men into action on 15th September 1916, near Glincy, France. 

Realising the seriousness of his wound but not wishing to alarm them, he asked for a cigarette which he smoked nonchalantly as he was carried to the dressing station – those unicorns again! 

Before he died, he requested his flask be given to his father, who subsequently kept it permanently on his table. 

Raymond was buried at Guillemont Road Station Cemetery in the Somme. The words on his gravestone read:

SMALL TIME, BUT IN THAT SMALL MOST GREATLY LIVED THIS STAR OF ENGLAND

Raymond was 37 years old and at least had the time to father three children before joining the war into which his father had led Britain. The Prime Minister was devastated and only lasted another 10 months in office. 

Ironically, it was to be Raymond’s infant  son, Julian, who was to inherit Mells in 1928. He became the 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith, continuing the family line down to the modern era.

Siegfried Sassoon 

Sassoon had a conflicted war, been known for both reckless bravery and his anti war sentiments. Of the three, he was the only one to survive the war and his body does actually lie in the graveyard, beneath the plainest of the three memorials.

Born in 1886, he was the middle of 3 sons of a rich jew who was disinherited for marrying an Anglo Catholic. He abandoned the family when Sassoon was 4 years old. 

Sassoon went on to study history at Cambridge and started a modest career as a poet. With war on the horizon, he was already enlisted when it broke out, but his departure to the Royal Welch Fusiliers was delayed until May 1915 due to a broken arm in a riding accident and he didn’t actually reach the front until November. 

His younger brother Hamo died at Gallipoli on 1st November 1915 and he rapidly lost his previous Romantic view of the war. Horrified by the misery of the trenches, he earned the nickname ‘Mad Jack’ for his reckless feats of bravery and derring do.

He received the Military Cross in July 1816 but that August found him at Somerville College in Oxford, then a convalescent hospital for officers, recovering from gastric fever.

He then declined to go back to the war, and displayed his pacifism in the reading of a letter in the House of Commons denouncing the war. Rather than court martial him, he was sent to hospital in Edinburgh supposedly suffering from shell shock, where he formed a close friendship with Wilfred Owen, another famous war poet.

By the end of 1917, he was training recruits in Limerick, where he enjoyed the hunting, before a stint in Palestine and his final return to the front, where he was wounded by friendly fire in July 1918, seeing out the rest of the war in Britain.

His post war life saw him turn to writing, most notably Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer.

After various homosexual affairs, he finally married Hetty in 1933 and had a much wanted son, George, although the marriage broke up in 1945.

An inheritance allowed him to live quietly at Heytesbury House in Wiltshire. Later in life he converted to Roman Catholicism. He was an admirer of Ronald Knox, a priest who was later buried at Mells, hence Sassoon’s wish to be buried near him.

He died on the 1st September, 1967, and his grave can be seen a little behind that of Knox’s, its simple white headstone belying the tumultuous life he led.

Other Monuments in the Church

Directly opposite the Asquith memorial, there is a very striking gesso plaque depicting a peacock. This is in memory of Laura Lyttleton, whose body actually lies in Scotland. She was a great friend of Frances Horner and died in childbirth in 1885.

Designed by Edward Burne-Jones, he kept a second painted version of it for himself: it can now be seen in the V & A. The peacock is a symbol of immortality and the laurel tree growing out of the tomb depicts a refusal to die.

The Nicholson Window

Originally the Horner statue stood in the rather dark family Chapel before being moved to its present more central position in 2007. It was overlooked there by an unusual stained glass window by William Nicholson, showing St Francis of Assisi feeding the birds and the fishes. This was erected as a memorial to Edward’s father who died in 1927.

A wander outside the church will reveal the Horner tombs and a yew tree walk which was also designed by Lutyens. Follow it down to a field from where it is worth ascending the gentle hill for an excellent view of the church with the Manor House beside it.

We sat on the hill top and enjoyed the bucolic view of old England, gazing out over the honey coloured church and manor, at a view which must have changed little since Edward Horner’s time. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I’m sure I glimpsed a unicorn galloping by.

Notes

Whilst in Mells, don’t miss the characterful Talbot Inn with rooms and great food. The lovely Walled Garden Cafe has light meals and teas in a secluded garden setting.