Second Lieutenant Edward Deakin Ashton became one of the first casualties in the Somme offensive, a battle that would claim over a million lives in the following five months.
He was the last of that branch of the Ashtons.
He stands for a cultural loss and forgetfulness beynd our family and Soulton.
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A summer Saturday dawned with a deafening artillery barrage finally subsiding. Smoke slowly cleared to reveal a bright morning, a stark contrast to the coming events. At precisely 7:30 am, a massive attack commenced along a 14-mile front. The 15th, 16th, and 19th Battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers (Salford Pals), part of the 32nd Division, charged “over the top” towards the Thiepval redoubt, northeast of Amiens. As part of this assault, Ashton’s battalion aimed to capture the Thiepval Ridge near the chateau ruins. Their starting point was close to the northeastern edge of Thiepval Wood, where a sunken lane once existed (since filled in during the 1980s).
Within minutes, Edward Ashton’s bravery cost him his life. Leading an attack, he fell victim to one of the 30 machine guns defending the western approaches to the small village.
Educated at Sedbergh and Baliol College, Oxford, Edward Deakin Ashton was the only son of his parents.
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The circumstances of his death, and the wider loss of so many of his contemporaries and their learning perspectives and culture, is a significant part of why the (needfully) largely oral traditions around Old Sir Rowland Hill and what he represented receded from view in the 20th century.
The catastrophic loss of so many young men in circumstances of failure of statecraft sent Europe questing in new directions, and – lighting on Modernism – all of the older traditions were either consciously put away, or buried in mass forgetfulness. It was an deeply painful time and the trauma remains only part processed.
This was reinforced by repeated emergencies in the later 20th century: such as another World War, repeated economic shocks, and shifting power on a global scale.
The Soulton lines back to Old Sir Rowland run via the Deakins (who were clearly honoured in Edward’s naming) of whom William Thomas Ashton married a daughter (Lydia Grace, herself the daughter of the designer of the Soulton Dancing Pavement). This is on of a couple of instances of the family name changing at Soulton as daughters married sons carrying different names.
From the middle of the 19th century until 1958 that Ashton family were between Soulton and Darwen, and the farm at Soulton was let out. The Hill furnature was removed during this time and kept with family (there have been a couple of lettings of Soulton outside the family over the last 470 years; for a period from the 1780s the concealed chapel was bricked up to prevent tenant access, and only reopended in the 1840s).
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Edward has a profile here. His university copies of Shakespeare remain with the family and are a huge treasure. Out of respect, the name ‘Edward’ has not been used for any member of this line of the Ashton family in the last 100 years.
There is a fine memorial to him at on of the major Ashton family graves in Darwen cemetery. The memorable inscription from Ecclesiastes 12:7 reads:
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.
