#downsidearchives

Friday 1st July is the centenary of the Battle of the Somme at which over a million men were killed or wounded. Of this number are 18 Downside men, Old Gregorians who had gone to serve their country. Alongside these men, members of the Downside monastic community also served as Military Chaplains. This centenary we will be remembering them all at Downside.

Three boys of the school died on the 1st July, killed in the advances into German trenches which were supposed to be have been blown to pieces by the massive preliminary artillery bombardment, yet which remained well defended. The list of the Downside boys who died between 1st July and 18th November in this battle are listed here.  

2nd Lieutenant Evan Edward Trevor-Jones. 1st July aged 20.

2nd Lieutenant Cuthbert A Stonor. 1st July aged 28.

Lieutenant Hugh Gilbert Clifford. 1st July aged 19.

2nd Lieutenant Kenneth Callan Macardle. 9th July aged 26.

Lieutenant D'arcy John Joseph Hartley. 14th July aged 26.

2nd Lieutenant Stephen Henry Hewett. 22nd July aged 23.

Captain Noel Cairns Clery MC. 24th July aged 23.

2nd Lieutenant Philip Stephen Koe. 1st August aged 20.

2nd Lieutenant Richard Walker. 9th August aged 33.

2nd Lieutenant Patrick Gilbert O'Hara. 14th August aged 19.

2nd Lieutenant Cecil William Daly. 18th August aged 19.

2nd Lieutenant Hugh Joseph Francis Fleming. 24th August aged 20.

2nd Lieutenant Roderick Alan Edward O'Connor. 1st September aged 22.

Major Noel Wilfrid Lawder. 4th September aged 29.

2nd Lieutenant Henry Lubienski Bodenham. 7th September aged 20.

Captain John Oswin Turnbull. 9th September aged 27.

Private William Forster. 7th October aged 24.

2nd Lieutenant Gilbert Austin Turner. 17th November aged 19.

Also on the Western Front during this time were monks of the community here at Downside, who had volunteered as Military Chaplains. One of these, Dom Urban Butler, was heavily involved in the Battle of the Somme, serving with 9th Cheshire Regiment. Although not in the first waves of attacks, the Cheshires were heavily involved in the fighting over the next days and weeks. Dom Urban wrote to his mother of his experiences on 7th July, his first opportunity to write since the 1st.

'Presently we arrived at the communication trenches; the brigade went in and I left them to go to the advanced dressing station in the chateau in the wood of Becourt (a good map of the battlefield ought to show it) some three kilometres east of Albert and just behind our front lines as it was on that famous first of July. The horrors of that place in which I have since spent so many hours will live in my mind till my last day. The heat was overpowering and I could hardly support the awful stench of blood and perspiration.'

Dom Urban spent three days in the basement of the chateau treating wounded men as they came back from the front lines. He wrote 'There were days in the past when men wounded one another in honourable anger, striking at the brow or the breast with clean steel. But these wounds are an outrage against heaven and I will not offend your feelings by describing what I have witnessed. Was man made after God’s image to be torn by hideous machinery and has the world developing upon an utterly false theory of civilisation determined to tear itself to pieces in rage at the sight of its own devil-worship?'

On this 1st July, Downside remembers not just those who fell, but those who served and witnessed the horrors of one of the bloodiest episodes in British history.

This fine replica of the famous locomotive The Flying Scotsman was once an item of great interest and amusement here at Downside. Created by Downside monk, Dom Edmund Lee, this replica was a ride on steam train which used to run around its own tracks on the grounds within Downside school.

Dom Edmund Lee was born in London in 1903 and gained a BSc from Bristol University. He was clothed as a priest at Downside in 1927 and became a priest in 1932. Dom Edmund taught in the school as Housemaster of Smythe 1934-41 and 1945-48. He was Bursar 1948-54 and Parish Priest at Norton St Philip 1934-77.

The replica locomotive was completed by Dom Edmund around 1945 to a very precise set of specifications. The train, we can assume, would have been a work of art, a testament to the technical skill of Dom Edmund.  

The train was never meant to be a working model which sat in a workshop. Dom Edmund had far greater plans. Therefore, a track was created in the school grounds, as demonstrated in the picture above. The engine had a seat for a driver, and could pull either 10 adults or 20 children behind it on the track. Indeed, the track was so refined, a tunnel was also constructed, as below.

Unfortunately, the locomotive was sold, or given away in the mid 1950's and today there is no sign that there was ever a train track here at Downside. The brief period in the late 1940's and early 1950's when a steam train ran around the grounds of Downside is a unique footnote in the history of the site. Yet the memory of it is a testament to the vision and technical expertise of Dom Edmund Lee who died in 1980, leaving behind a wonderful chapter in the history of Downside.

From 31st May to 1st June 1916, the Battle of Jutland was fought between the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy. Although not as decisive as both sides would have wished, the battle has recently been termed 'the battle that won the war' by some historians.

Although losing more ships and men, the Royal Navy claimed a tactical victory as the Imperial German Navy sailed back to harbor and never threatened British supremacy at sea again in the Great War.

One of the ships lost that day was HMS Invincible, the world's first battlecruiser. During the Battle of Jutland she was the flagship of the Third Battlecruiser Squadron. On board HMS Invincible was an Old Gregorian, John Henry Grattan Esmonde, who was one of 1026 men who lost their lives when she sank.

John Henry Grattan Esmonde was the younger son of Sir Thomas Henry Grattan Esmonde MP, and was born on 2nd May, 1899. He came to Downside in January 1910 and left in December 1911. He began a period of training at Osborne Naval Training College on the Isle of Wight, before moving to the Britannia Royal Naval Training College at Dartmouth. 

His training was barely completed when war broke out in August 1914, and he was immediately gazetted midshipman and joined HMS Invincible aged just 16. Esmonde was involved in several naval engagements onboard including Heligoland and the Falkland Islands, where Invincible sank the German cruiser Scharnhorst.

Of this battle Esmonde wrote a letter which was published in several newspapers and the Downside Review. Writing of HMS Invincible's battle with Scharnhorst, he wrote, 'We hit again and again. First our left gun sent her big crane spinning over the side. then our right gun blew her funnel to atoms and then another shot from the left gun sent her bridge and part of the forecastle sky high.' Esmonde was stationed in a gun turret, and from his letter, one which operated quite effectively.

'When the smoke cleared, she [Scharnhorst] was on her side, and her propellers were lashing the water round into foam; then she capsized altogether and went to the bottom! So that the German flagship, sank with Admiral von Spee and 900 German sailors, not a man being saved.'

At the Battle of Jutland, HMS Invincible was hit by shells from Lutzow and Derfllinger and she was sunk in 90 seconds after a shell penetrated a magazine and she exploded. A survivor, Commander Hubert Dannreuther, wrote to Esmonde's father, saying 'Death must have been almost instantaneous and painless to your son, and his end was one you may well be proud to think of.'

A naval chaplain also wrote to Esmonde's father. 'He was always on the spot for Confession and Mass, and went to no end of trouble to make arrangements, and to induce his men to come to the Sacraments.'

On 7th May 1915, the Cunard Liner The Lusitania was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat with the loss of 1,198 passengers and crew. The ship, once the world's largest passenger ship, sunk in just 18 minutes.

The sinking of The Lusitania is widely thought to have been a reason behind the United States entrance into the First World War in 1917, after public opinion turned against Germany after the sinking.

Downside's link to the sinking is through Father Basil William Maturin, a Catholic priest who was on his way back to Britain after a preaching tour of the United States.

Maturin was born in Ireland in 1847 and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1876 he went to Philadelphia in the United States to an Episcopalian church as rector. In 1897 he converted to Catholicism, and wrote many books including Laws of the Spiritual Life, Self Knowledge and Self Discipline and The Price of Unity.

In 1912 Maturin came to Downside and was clothed as a monk by Abbot Cuthbert Butler in the Abbey Church. Unfortunately, after just a few months he resigned the habit, instead choosing to become a secular priest, and in 1913 he was made Chaplain to the University of Oxford.

On the day of the sinking, eyewitness accounts of Maturin state that he was not wearing a lifejacket and was seen to pass a child into a lifeboat as well as giving absolutions to those onboard.

Maturin's body was found in Ballycotton Bay and he is buried in Brompton Oratory.