Battersea’s War Poet

Lieutenant Edward Thomas who joined the Artist Rifles in 1914.

Belleville Primary School was founded in 1877 on Webb's road with a capacity to accommodate 828 children. In the 1880s one of its pupils was young Edward Thomas, who later attended Battersea Grammar School. Reminiscing about Belleville, he wrote in later years 'In the hard asphalt playground we played rounders and egg-cap and games with tops, marbles and cherry stones'.

After studying history at Oxford, Thomas became a literary critic for the Daily Chronicle. It was in that role that he helped the former tramp W.H.Davies, (photo with pipe) become one of the most famous poets of the period. Thomas started working more seriously on his poetry in 1914.

That same year during an adventure trip with his friend the American poet Robert Frost, the two reached a crossroad, which inspired Frost to write the poem 'The Road not Taken', in allusion to Thomas's indecisiveness as to what road to take. It is believed this influenced Thomas's decision to enlist for the Great War. Married with three children, he was not required to serve.

Commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, Thomas was sent to France in 1917, dying a few weeks later at the Battle of Arras. He is one of 15 War Poets commemorated in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. The memorial stone reads a quote by Wilfred Owen 'My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity'.

'Here love ends,
Despair, ambition ends;
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.'

E. Thomas