19th June 2015

This June I was lucky enough to go on the Frome College 2015 First World War Battlefields Trip led by Mr Hurrell (Frome College History Department), along with 45 other Year 9 students.

We stayed in Belgium and had one full day in France visiting sites on the Somme, on an extremely hot day, and another full day going round sites on the Ypres Salient. It was at the end of our first day that we went to look for, and find, the grave of Raymond Asquith at Guillemont Road Cemetery. It was in a very quiet spot not far from Albert, and the day was beginning to cool down as the sun set.

Reading his epitaph ‘Small time, but in that small most greatly lived this Star of England,’ you can see that this man, the son of the prime minister, Herbert Asquith, was highly thought of.

My family know Mells very well, and I could imagine his wife Katherine Horner of Mells going to visit his grave when she went to France to be a nurse after his death. At first the graves were just marked with wooden crosses and the one that marked Raymond’s grave is now in the church at Mells.

After the summer holidays I and other Frome College students will hopefully be working with the Home of our Delight team to research Mells and other First World War stories like this, to create a new archive and digital history walk.

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