Helen Frances Asquith (1908 - 2000)

Born 22 Oct 1908 in London, England, United Kingdom

Ancestors

Died 25 May 2000 at age 91 in Somerset, England, United Kingdom

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Biography

Lady Helen Asquith was born in London in 1908.^[1]

LADY HELEN ASQUITH, who has died aged 91, was a teacher and schools inspector, and for 40 years played a leading part in the annual English National Pilgrimage to Lourdes. From 1970 to 1984 she was the Chief Handmaid of the Society of Our Lady of Lourdes, organising some 80 voluntary workers to care for the sick pilgrims. From 1984 to 1990 she was responsible, as secretary, for the overall planning and running of the Society's pilgrimage. She was much admired by sick pilgrims and by her fellow helpers alike. Helen Frances Asquith was born on October 22 1908. She was named after her grandmother Helen (née Melland), first wife of the Prime Minister H H Asquith, who was created a peer as the Earl of Oxford and Asquith in 1925. Her father, Raymond Asquith, the Prime Minister's brilliant eldest son, was killed on the Somme when Helen was seven. "It's bad news about Helen being musical," he had written from the Front, "but I am glad she can ride." Her mother, Katharine Horner, eventually inherited what remained of the Mells estate in Somerset, after the death in action of her brother Edward in 1917. Helen attended St Paul's Girls' School, London, and read Greats at Somerville College, Oxford. Among her contemporaries at Oxford were her cousin Quintin Hogg. Like her mother, she was received into the Roman Catholic Church. Mells had been bought by the Horner family at the Dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey, and under the inspiration of Katharine Asquith it was to become a magnet for such prominent Catholics as Ronald Knox. He found at Mells a quiet and hospitable place to work and lived there in declining health in the last 10 years of his life. Other writers who often stayed at Mells included Evelyn Waugh, Douglas Woodruff, Siegfried Sassoon, Father Martin D'Arcy and Christopher Hollis, whose son, the present Bishop of Portsmouth, was one of Lady Helen's many godchildren. Monks from Ampleforth and Downside were also regular visitors. Lady Helen's first teaching post was at Clapham Secondary School, but in 1938 she joined the Schools Inspectorate. During her career she took a close interest in schools - good and bad - all over Wiltshire, with an interval of 10 years in Oxfordshire. When the Second World War came, she also turned her hand to the plough, behind two cart-horses. She later ran a small farm on the Mells estate, the care of which had been bequeathed to her by her parents' old friend Conrad Russell; and she looked after the chapel created in the Manor House garden in 1941. On her retirement in 1968, she went back to teaching, and thought nothing of a daily drive of 30 miles each way from Mells to the convent school of St Mary's, Shaftesbury. She finally gave up teaching shortly before her 80th birthday. She served for many years as a trustee of the Girls' Public Day Schools Trust. To many of her former pupils she was a valued friend. Lady Helen's complete disregard for her own preferences reflected great self-discipline and dedication, concealed under an affectionate sense of humour. She had a great zest for life, and a keen appetite for friends. Example, rather than precept, was her method of communicating her piety. After her mother's death in 1976, she taught herself Spanish and was free again to indulge a sense of adventure that had taken her to many high places in the Alps before the war. She embarked on a series of arduous sightseeing tours in Spain. Even when she was over 80 she would take her young relations on rocky scrambles in the neighbourhood of Mells. Lady Helen was appointed OBE in 1965. In 1989 she was awarded the papal medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice.

She died in Somerset in 2000.^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ "England and Wales Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2FVG-7D1 : 1 October 2014), Helen Asquith, 1908; from "England & Wales Births, 1837-2006," database, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : 2012); citing Birth Registration, St. Giles, London, England, citing General Register Office, Southport, England.
2. ↑ "England and Wales Death Registration Index 1837-2007," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVZF-3R7S : 4 September 2014), Helen Frances Asquith, May 2000; from "England & Wales Deaths, 1837-2006," database, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : 2012); citing Death Registration, Mendip, Somerset, England, General Register Office, Southport, England.

• Wikipedia: Raymond Asquith
• ThePeerage.com: Lady Helen Frances Asquith

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1347336/Lady-Helen-Asquith.html 12:00AM BST 08 Jul 2000