1858
Frances Graham Born
Daughter of William Graham, Liberal MP, India merchant and patron of the arts, Frances continued her father’s passion for the arts both in London and at home in Somerset.
ArtistsAsquith familyHorner familyMellswomen
1858
1878
1878
Alfred Munnings born
Alfred Munnings was born in Mendham, Suffolk, son of a Suffolk miller.
ArtistsMunnings
1879
1879
Raymond Asquith Born
Raymond was the first son and heir of British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and his first wife Helen.
Asquith family
1879
Edward Vranch born
Third of nine children born to farm worker William and Fanny Vranch, Coleford
Mells MemorialMilitaryVranch family
1885
9 Sep 1885
Katharine Horner born
Youngest daughter of Sir John and Lady Frances Horner, brought up at Mells Manor with her siblings, Cicely, Edward and Mark. Quieter than her elder sister, Katharine had a deep love of poetry, a passion she shared with her husband to be Raymond Asquith, whom she first met in 1901 when he visited Mells with his family.
Asquith familyHorner familyMellswomen
1888
1888
Edward Horner Born
Edward was the oldest son and heir to the Horner estate in Mells.
Horner family
1897
1897
Edward Vranch joins 13th Regiment of Foot
Later to become the Somerset Light Infantry. Edward was then 18; went on to serve in Malta, India and China.
Mells MemorialMilitaryVranch family
1898
1896
Edwin Lutyens First Meets Frances Horner
ArtistsHorner familyLutyenswomen
17 June 1898
Edward Burne-Jones dies
Burne-Jones, was one of the most important of the late Pre-Raphaelite artists. He was a lifelong friend and admirer of Frances Graham (later to be Frances Horner), despite being 22 years her senior. Frances and her family appear in Burne-Jones sketches and paintings, and Frances, a talented embroiderer, was responsible for the production of several of his embroideries and tapestries.
Artists
1907
1907
Beatrice King Born
Beatrice was younger sister of Tom and Charles King, both of whom are remembered on the Mells war memorial.
FamilyKing familyMellswomen
25 Jul 1907
Raymond Asquith Marries Katharine Horner
One of the London society weddings of the year, uniting two families – the Horner and Asquith’s – who had long been close friends and part of the set known as the ‘Souls.’
Asquith familyHorner familywomen
1908
1908
Mark Horner dies of Scarlet Fever
Well liked youngest son of Sir John and Lady Frances Horner whose death at the age of 16 left his brother Edward as the sole male heir.
Horner familyMells
1908 Herbert Asquith Becomes Prime Minister
22 Oct 1908
Lady Helen Frances Asquith born
Helen was the first child of Raymond and Katharine Asquith. A small collection of her letters to her father, Raymond, and Uncle Edward Horner, while they were on active service, remain in the Asquith / Horner archive. She is also captured on film in the BBC documentary ‘The Day the Guns Fell Silent’ made in 1998.
Asquith familyHorner familywomen
1909
1909
Edward Vranch marries Edith Annie Fisher of Peasdown St John
Edward and Annie went on to have three children; Reginald, Kenneth and Peggy. Edith would have moved with her husband’s military life, but returned to Peasedown in 1915 whilst her husband served in France.
Mells MemorialMilitaryVranch family
1910
1910
Lady Perdita Rose Mary Asquith Born
Asquith familyHorner familyMellswomen
1914
28 Jun 1914 Archduke Ferdinand of Austria assassinated in Sarajevo
28 Jul 1914 Austria declares war on Serbia
August 1914
Alfred Munnings attempts to volunteer for military service but rejected
Although Munnings tried to volunteer to join the army several times, he was assessed as unfit to to fight due to blindness in one eye.
ArtistsMilitaryMunnings
2 Aug 1914 Clash in London between peace campaigners and war supporters
11 Aug 1914 Royal Army Medical Corps waved off at Frome Railway Station
25 Aug 1914
Mells Colliery payments to the families of reservists
The Mells Colliery Company announces that it will pay the wives of Reservists 3s 6d per week during their absence, as well as a bag of coal.
FamilyWork
September 1914 First Belgian refugees arrive in Frome
14 Sep 1914
Charles King dies at Battle of Aisne, France
Charles Glazier King was the 21 year old son of Richard Henry and Rose King, of Lower Vobster, Coleford, near Bath, Somerset.
Charles and his brother Tom enlisted with the Coldstream Guards in 1913 having been rejected by the Metropolitan Police. They hoped to try again for the police at a later date but sadly neither brother survived the war.
King familyMellsMells MemorialMilitary
19 Oct 1914 First Battle of Ypres
29 Oct 1914 Turkey enters the war on Germany’s side
29 Oct 1914 Trench warfare begins on the Western Front
31 Oct 1914
Alfred Grace killed at the Balle of Neuves Chappelles, France
He is listed on the Le Tournet Memorial which commemorates those who fell in the Battle of La Bassee, Neuve Chapelle, Auberrs Ridge and Festubert 1914-15. Private in the 1st Battalion The Wiltshire Regiment.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
November 1914 Keyford asylum becomes the Frome Red Cross Hospital
7 Nov 1914 First Belgian casualties arrive at Longleat Relief Hospital
23 Nov 1914 Battalion of the Royal Field Artillery arrive in Frome
25 Dec 1914 Christmas Truce on the Western Front
26 Dec 1914 First sighting of German planes over London
1915
19 Jan 1915 First German zeppelin attack on England
1915
Creation of the first Landships (Tanks) Committee by First Lord of the Admirality
For secrecy the name of the Landships Committee (created by the then First Lord, Winston Churchill) was changed to the Tank Supply Committee as a good cover for the new armoured vehicles being devised (water tanks were considered to be the same size and shape) This is the name that has remained in constant use since.
February 1915
Van de Verve family, refugees from Belgium, arrive in Mells
In 1915 Poyntz House, Mells became temporary home to the Van der Werve family – husband, wife and five children. The family remained throughout the war, and according to Lady Horner’s memoir, continued to contribute to village charities long after their return to Belgium.
MellsRefugees
19 Feb 1915 The Dardanelles Campaign begins
19 Feb 1915 First use of poison gas by the German military
21 Feb 1915 68,280 sandwiches dispatched to soldiers stationed in Frome
March 1915 Frome Prisoner of War fund set up
18 Mar 1915 Government begins to enrol women to take the place of serving men
26 Mar 1915 Large number of casualties admitted to the Keyford Red Cross Hospital
22 Apr 1915 Germany fire chlorine gas shells at Allied Lines
22 Apr 1915 Second Battle of Ypres ends in stalemate
May 1915 Allied Forces land at Gallipoli
May 1915
Edward Horner Severely Wounded
Edward was seriously injured when a bullet passed through his kidney, necessitating an operation to remove it. This was such a high risk procedure, his parents were allowed to travel to France to be with him.
Horner familyMells MemorialMilitary
7 May 1915 Lusitania sunk by German submarine with over a thousand lives lost
13 May 1915
Arthur Long dies at Ypres, Belgium
An ex Boer War veteran, Arthur Long re-joined his old regiment in 1914. He and his brother were popular and well known in Mells, as village builders and also in the village theatricals. Corporal in the Somerset Yeomanry, he left a widow and three children.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
13 May 1915
Stanes Geoffrey Bates Killed in Action near Hooge, Ypres During the Battle of Frexenburg Ridge
He is commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) memorial to the ‘Missing’. Adjutant in the North Somerset Yeomanry, his family were tenants of Mells Park.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
24th May 1915
Memorial Service for Capt. Stanes Geoffrey Bates and Corporal Arthur James Long
Both of these Mells men were with the North Somerset Yeomanry and were killed in action on Thursday 13th May 1915. Capt Bates was the only son and heir of Mr G. T. Bates of Mells Park and Arthur Long – an ex Boer War veteran – was well known as the village builder and for the prominent part he played in the village theatricals. The service took place in the Church of St Andrew and as described in The Somerset Standard, “It was a very representative congregation – high and low, rich and poor, one with another – who had assembled with one common aim, to do honour to the memory of two heroes.” Both men are commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial to the ‘Missing.’
June 1915
Joint Memorial Service for Captain Bates and Arthur Long at Mells Church
MellsMells Memorial
16 Aug 1915
Private Herbert Olding dies at Ypres, Belgium
Herbert Olding was the 23 year old son of Thomas and Lydia Olding of Wadbury, Mells, Great Elm. He is buried in Ypres Reservoir Cemetery, West Flanders, Belgium.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
1 Oct 1915
Frome War Hospital Depot opens at 12 Cheap Street
Run entirely by volunteers, by August 1918 the depot had made 220,576 articles for dispatch from it’s needlework, surgical dressing and carpentry rooms.
FromeHospitals
16 Oct 1915
Helen writes to her father, Raymond Asquith
The letter, transcribed by Frome College History Club, thanks Raymond for the present of a pen knife.
Asquith familyFamilyMellswomen
4 December 1915
Edgar Chamberlain letter to Frances Horner thanking her for Christmas Parcel
Parcels must have been sent to all village men currently serving. This is one of several thank you letters which survive in the Horner / Asquith archive; a rare voice of one of the village men named on the memorial. The letters show, despite the strong class distinctions of the time, the close connections and sense of social responsibility that continued in the village.
Horner familyMellsMells MemorialMilitary
1916
27 Jan 1916 Conscription introduced in Britain
13 Feb 1916 Liberal MP for Frome, Sir John Barlow votes against the Military Service Act
21 Feb 1916 Start of the Battle of Verdun
7 Apr 1916
Francis Baber, Private in the Gloucestershire Regiment, Dies of Pneumonia, St Omer
The 35th Division arrived in France at the end of January/early February 1916, completing its concentration around St Omer by the 9th of that month. The Division’s first major action occurred during the Battle of the Somme, the Battle for Bazentin ridge from 15th-17th July. Francis John Baber was the 23 year old son of Edmund and Mary Louisa Baber of Mells.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
15 Apr 1916
Herbert Vranch, Private in the Somerset Light Infantry, Killed in Action
As he is buried in Kut War Cemetery, Iraq, it is highly probable that he was among the two drafts supplied as reinforcements to the 2nd Battalion Dorset regiment (16th Infantry Brigade 6th Poona Division) captured at Kut. His home was Mells Green.
MellsMells MemorialMilitaryVranch family
22 April 1916
Julian “Trim” Asquith Born
Katharine Asquith gave birth to the Asquiths’ first and only son Julian in April 1916, nicknamed ‘Trim’ by his father Raymond on a visit home before his death at the Front.
Asquith familyFamilyHorner familyMells
May 1916 On War Service Brooch introduced for women ‘Engaged in the manufacture of munitions of War or other urgent work’
31 May 1916 The Battle of Jutland in the North Sea
5 Jun 1916 Lord Kitchener and 600 men drowned when HMS Hampshire struck an enemy mine, off the Orkneys
1 Jul 1916 Battle of the Somme begins
5 Jul 1916 J.W. Singer & Sons is declared ‘Controlled under the Munitions Act’
27 Jul 1916 Siegfried Sassoon awarded the Military Cross for ‘conspicuous gallantry’
September 1916
Lieut. Col. A. W. Mayo Robinson inspects Keyford Red Cross Hospital
“I thought the men looked so happy and well nourished, and I was specially pleased with the trench fever cases, which seem to do better here than at any other hospital that I visited”.
FromeHospitals
12/09/1916
Edward Vranch awarded the Russian Medal of St George, 1st class
This was the only 1st class award of this medal to be given to a member of the Somerset Light Infantry during the entire war.
Mells MemorialMilitaryVranch family
15 Sep 1916 First use of tanks on the battlefield
15 Sep 1916 Battle of Flers-Courcelette Begins
15 September 1916
Lieutenant Raymond Asquith dies at the Battle of Flers/Courcelette, Somme
A lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, Raymond Asquith was the eldest son of the wartime prime minister Herbert Asquith (1908-1916) and husband of Katharine, youngest daughter of the Horner family, Mells.
Asquith familyHorner familyMellsMells MemorialMilitary
16 September 1916
Tom King of Vobster dies in the Battle of Flers/Courcelette, Somme
Tom King (standing) was the 25 years old son of Richard Henry and Rose King, of Lower Vobster, Coleford, near Bath, Somerset. He is one of three men named on the village memorial who died the same weekend in the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, during the Somme offensive.
King familyMellsMells MemorialMilitary
16 Sep 1916
Edward Vranch of Mells and Peasdown dies at the Battle of Flers/ Courcelette, Somme, France
A sergeant in the Somerset Light Infantry, Edward Vranch was a career soldier who had already served twenty years in the army in Malta, India and China.
MellsMells MemorialMilitaryVranch family
27 Sep 1916
Private Oliver Burge dies at the Battle of Thiepval, France
Oliver Samuel Burge was born at Mells near Frome. Aged 22, he was the seventh son of the late Mr George Burge and was an under-gardener at Mells Park. His younger brother of Stanley also died during the First World War, whilst a prisoner of war in Germany.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
October 1916
‘Scholars into Soldiers’ by Rothenstein exhibited at the Royal Academy
Rothensein began ‘Scholars into Soldiers’ in 1916, as part of an idea, never completed, for a war memorial. It depicts Oxford graduates of the time, receiving their degrees wearing academic robes over their military uniforms. The soldiers depicted include Raymond Asquith (far left), who had died at the Battle of Flers-Corcelette only weeks before the painting was exhibited, unfinished, at the Eleventh Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the Royal Academy. ‘Scholars into Soldiers’, which takes the form of a triptych, was never completed; The proposal, in the thick of war, was perhaps too early to consider for a country in no way ready to think about how to remember.
ArtistsAsquith family
7 Dec 1916 Herbert Asquith resigns as Prime Minister
13 Dec 1916
Sapper Frank Philips dies in the Somme, France
Frank Phillips was the son of Henry Phillips and the late Emma Phillips of 141 Manchester Road, Millwall London, emigrated to Australia, but was native of Mells. He joined the Australian Imperial Force on the 31st January 1916. Frank was 45 when the unit embarked from Sydney aboard the HMAT “Star of Victoria” on the 31st March 1916.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
1917
1917
Army employs Alfred Munnings to care for cavalry horses, Caldecott Park
Alfred Munnings finally succeeded in getting an army job by writing to Cecil Aldin, an old hunting friend, now the major in charge of the Remount Depot at Caldecott Park, near Reading. Munnings helped care for the thousands of horses that arrived each week, restoring them to condition to be send off to the war.
ArtistsMilitaryMunnings
5 Jan 1917
Thomas Witcombe, Private in Devonshire Regiment, Killed in Action.
He was buried in the Serre Road Cemetery, No1, Hebeterne, Pas de Calais, France. His home was Sawpit Cottage, Mells.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
1 Feb 1917 Sugar rationing introduced in Britain
1917
First official War Artists appointed and sent to France
Official war artists were appointed and sent to France to record the events of the war including William Orpen and Augustus John.
ArtistsMilitary
25 Feb 1917 Decryption of the Zimmerman telegram proposing a military alliance between Germany and Mexico
11 Mar 1917 British troops capture Baghdad
15 Mar 1917 Russian Tsar, Tsar Nicholas II abdicates
6 Apr 1917 United States enters the war on the side of the Allies
July 1917
Edwin Lutyens Visits a Battlefield in France
ArtistsLutyensMells MemorialMilitary
16 Jul 1917 Third Battle of Ypres (also known at Passchendaele) begins
22 Aug 1917
Edgar Chamberlain, Lance Corporal, Somerset Light Infantry Killed in an Attack on Inverness Copse
This was during the Third Battle of Ypres (alternatively known as the Passchendaele offensive) and was fought over the period 31 July – 10 November 1917. He is commemorated on Tyne Cot Memorial, Paschendaele.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
October 1917
Mells Park destroyed by fire
“The fire broke out at seven Thurs.night – there were only two maids and the one-legged there – and it was a wild blowing pouring night… The colliers and farmers and villagers were splendid. They saved most of the books… and all the worst family portraits of course…” Frances Horner writing to Katharine Asquith.
FamilyHorner familyMells
8 Oct 1917
Wilfred Owen begins his poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’
It is finished between January and March 1918, but not published until after Owens death in 1920
7 Nov 1917 Bolsheviks overthrow the Russian Government during the 1917 Revolution
20 November - 7 December 1917 Battle of Cambrai
21 Nov 1917
Edward Horner dies at the Battle of Cambrai, France
Edward had already been seriously injured in May 1915 when a bullet passed through his kidney, necessitating an operation to remove it. This was such a high risk procedure, his parents travelled to France to be with him. Remarkably Edward recovered, and after a frustrating time spent in Egypt on a staff job, in February 1917, at his own insistence, he returned to the 18th (Queen Mary’s) Own Hussars (cavalry) in France, where he was shot and killed by a sniper at Noyelles.
Horner familyMellsMells MemorialMilitary
1918
January 1918 Women’s Royal Navy established
1918
Munnings joins the Canadian War Memorials Art Programme
Alfred Munnings was not amongst the official war artists, however Max Aitken, later Lord , to Beaverbrook created the Canadian War Memorials’ Scheme to record the contribution of Canadian troops. Munnings was approached to paint the Canadian Cavalry Brigade in action in France. His first portrait was of General Jack Seeley on Warrior, painted in full view of the enemy who were barely a mile away.
ArtistsMilitaryMunnings
6 Feb 1918 Women aged 30 or over given the right to vote
3 Mar 1918 Germany and Russia make peace
30 Mar 1918
Munnings paints ‘The Charge of Flowerdrew’s Squadron’
One of his most famous paintings, depicting one of the last great cavalry charges at the Battle of Moreuil Wood. It was not painted from life, and is a romantic impression rather than an accurate portrait.
ArtistsMilitaryMunnings
1 Apr 1918 Women’s Royal Air Force established
April - August 1918
Katharine Asquith Nursing in France
Bereft at the loss of her husband and brother, Katherine left her three young children in the care of her mother and signed up as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse at the Duchess of Sutherland’s hospital at St Omer.
Asquith familyHospitalswomen
2 Apr 1918
Gilbert James, Private in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, Killed in Action During Ludendorf’s German Spring Offensive in Picardy
He is commemorated on the Poziers Memorial to the Fifth Army as ‘Missing’.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
10 Apr 1918
Wyndham Hames Private, Somerset Light Infantry Dies Whilst Serving in Palestine
He is buried in Ramleh Cemetery, Isreal. He was Gamekeeper to Sir John Horner.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
28 May 1918 First American battle offensive at Cantigny
4 Jun 1918
Stanley Burge, Private, 1st Battalion in the Berkshire Regiment (Prince Charlotte of Wale’s) Died Whilst a Prisoner of War
He is buried in Niederwehren Cemetery, Germany.
MellsMells MemorialMilitaryPrisoners of War
6 Aug 1918
Grand Red Cross fete held in Victoria Park
Opened by Admiral Lord Jellicoe, it was in aid of both the Frome Red Cross Hospital in Keyford and the War Hospital Depot on Cheap Street on 6th and 7th August.
FromeHospitals
10 Sep 1918
Edgar James, Private 2nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), Killed in Action During the Battle of Hindenburg Line
He was the son of Mr and Mrs Albert James, of Stones Ash Farm, Mells, Somerset. He was buried in Epehy Wood Farm Cemetery, Somme, France.
MellsMells MemorialMilitary
30 Oct 1918 Turkey makes peace with Allies
3 Nov 1918 Austria makes peace with Allies
4 Nov 1918
Wilfred Owen killed in action in France after being awarded the Military Cross
9 Nov 1918 Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates
11 Nov 1918 Armistice signed between France, Britain, and Germany
1919
16 Feb 1919
Edwin Fricker of Vobster dies of wounds sustained in France
Edwin was injured and transported home. He is buried in Vobster (St Edmund) churchyard, one of the many Commonwealth War Graves at home in the British Isles.
Mells MemorialMilitaryVobster
1919
Frances Horner and Katharine Asquith embroider ‘Love’
Mells Church houses a large embroidery ‘Love’ designed by Burne Jones. Believed to have been embroidered by Frances Horner and Katharine Asquith as part of their own grieving and as a gift to the village in memory of all those who did not come back.
ArtistsAsquith familyHorner familyMellswomen
June 1919
Munnings purchases Castle House, Dedham
Following the war, Munnings’ equestrian art became increasingly popular. The sale of a large number of paintings to Connell’s Gallery on Bond Street, enabled him to buy his house in Dedham. The Edward Horner memorial sculpture was the first work he undertook in his studio there.
ArtistsHorner familyMells MemorialMunnings
1919
Canadian War Memorials Exhibition, Ottawa
This exhibition included 45 of Munnings’ war paintings. Although these pictures did not make him much money, they gained him attention and commissions, particularly from riders and sportsmen who admired his portraits of officers on horseback. It also led to him being elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.
ArtistsMilitaryMunnings
19 Jul 1919
First sketch by Lutyens for cenotaph
LutyensMells MemorialMilitary
29 Jul 1919
Temporary Cenotaph completed as focus for the nation’s grief
The temporary cenotaph proved so popular that a permanent Cenotaph in Portland Stone was commissioned.
LutyensMells MemorialMilitary
4 Aug 1919
Edwin Lutyens delivers Edward Horner memorial tablet to Mells
Horner familyLutyensMellsMells Memorial
1920
1920
Plaster cast of Edward Horner statue completed in Dedham
One of only two sculptures that Munnings created, Munnings and his assistant Waters built the full size maquette in clay around an armature made by the local blacksmith in Dedham.
ArtistsHorner familyMellsMunnings
11 Nov 1920 Permanent Cenotaph completed for second anniversary of the Armistice
1921
13 Jun 1921
Somerset Standard letter to Frances Horner on the new village memorial
“But the Mells Memorial – well I frankly admit I found it impossible to describe adequately the effect it produced on me. I should think it would be impossible for anybody ever to pass it without being compelled to stop & look & think.” Reginald T. Dix, Editor
ArtistsAsquith familyHorner familyLutyensMellsMells Memorialwomen
26 Jun 1921
Mells War Memorial Unveiled
A crowd of 1,500 – as many people as populated the village at the time – turned out for the unveiling of the memorial by Brigadier General Arthur Asquith.
ArtistsLutyensMellsMells Memorial
1923
28 Sept 1923
Installation of the Edward Horner memorial: Munnings writes to Frances Horner
“I am very glad the bronze pleases you and I would very much like to see it now Sir Edwin has set it on its base”.
ArtistsHorner familyLutyensMellsMunnings