What was the first name of the person who volunteered for military service at the outbreak of war?
Sir Edwin Lutyens was among the most distinguished architects for war memorials in Britain. He became a nationally renowned designer of war memorials following his work as an adviser to (and later one of the principal architects for) the Imperial War Graves Commission and his design for the Cenotaph on London's Whitehall. As well as dozens of public war memorials in towns and cities across Britain, Lutyens designed several private memorials to individual casualties, usually the sons of friends or clients. Many were heirs to the country houses Lutyens had built earlier in his career, as in Mells where he renovated the manor at the beginning of the 20th century. His work in Mells arose through his friend and collaborator Gertrude Jekyll, who introduced him to the Horners through a family connection. Lutyens established a friendship which led to multiple commissions in the village. In addition to his work on the manor, he redesigned its gardens and worked on several related buildings and structures, and after the war was responsible for a tribute to Raymond Asquith (Edward's brother-in-law), also located in St Andrew's Church, and the village war memorial. Lutyens designed two other memorials to Horner: a wooden board featuring a description of the events leading up to his death, which was placed on a wall in the family chapel in St Andrew's Church; and a stone tablet in Cambrai Cathedral.Alfred Munnings was a painter specialising in horses. He volunteered for military service at the outbreak of war but was deemed unfit due to lack of sight in one eye. He volunteered to tend to army horses and was later recruited as a civilian war artist attached to Canadian cavalry. In 1919, he was beginning to move into sculpture. The Horner memorial was his first public work of sculpture, for which Lutyens commissioned him based on a pre-existing friendship. The work led to several further commissions for equine statues, including from the Jockey Club for a sculpture of the racehorse Brown Jack at Epsom Downs Racecourse. Munnings produced two models in clay for review by Lady Horner; he worked from photographs provided by Lady Horner and a live model in producing the statue. At one point, Munnings was so dissatisfied with the statue's head that he cut it off and re-cast it from scratch.
Alfred