The equestrian statue of Edward Horner stands inside St Andrew's Church in the village of Mells in Somerset, south-western England.

The group included Diana Manners who Edward pursued unsuccessfully for several years, his future brother-in-law - Raymond Asquith, Julian Grenfell, Patrick Shaw-Stewart and Charles Lister.

Shortly after the war broke out, he was a yeomanry officer in the part-time Territorial Force but he was keen to join the fighting on the Western Front and obtained a transfer to a cavalry regiment through his family's connections.

For Horner's memorial, Lutyens designed the plinth himself, and engaged the renowned equestrian painter and war artist Alfred Munnings for the latter's first public work of sculpture.

The plinth is in Portland stone and set into it is Horner's original grave marker; the family's coat of arms is carved into the front, while the sides bear various dedicatory inscriptions.

He struggled academically, graduating from Oxford with only a third-class degree, much to the disappointment of his parents and particularly his mother, who concentrated all her ambitions on Edward after Mark's premature death.

[6] Like many contemporary men, especially those from aristocratic backgrounds, Horner felt a keen sense of patriotism fostered by his private education and by tales from imperial campaigns around the turn of the 20th century, especially the Second Boer War (1899–1902).

He wrote to his mother to complain that they had taken his two best hunters, and his man servant, and he was made to "sleep on bare boards" and rise at 5 a.m.[9] As an influential aristocratic family, the Horners were able to secure him a transfer first to the Royal Horse Guards and then, in October 1914, to the 18th (Queen Mary's Own) Hussars.

7 General Hospital at Boulogne in France, he had a kidney removed, and at one point his condition was so grave that his parents were given special permission to visit him.

[3][11] Eager to return to the front, Horner went before a medical board in December 1915 but was told that his missing kidney rendered him ineligible for front-line duties.

[14] In October that year, the family's second home at Mells Park was destroyed by fire; Horner was given compassionate leave in early November and returned to the village to visit his parents.

[22][23][24][25] 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;[26][n 1] and a stone tablet in Cambrai Cathedral.

[30][31] 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.

[36] The memorial is a bronze equestrian statue, sculpted by Munnings, featuring Edward Horner as a young cavalry officer, bare-headed and seated on horseback with his sword and helmet attached to the saddle.

The statue originally faced a stained-glass window featuring a Madonna and Child, creating the image of Horner riding towards the light.

HUSSARS / DIED OF WOUNDS RECEIVED IN ACTION NOV 21ST 1917", is mounted on the rear of the plinth while the Horner family's coat of arms is carved in relief on the front.

The south (left) side bears the inscription EDWARD / DEAR SON OF JOHN HORNER AND FRANCES HIS WIFE WHO FELL IN ACTION AT NOYELLES NOV 21 1917 AGED TWENTY EIGHT, while the north (right) side reads HE HATH OUTSOARED THE SHADOW OF OUR NIGHT, from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonaïs (1821), an elegy for John Keats.

[23] Lutyens' original design for Horner's memorial included pillars rising from the plinth to enclose the statue in a mausoleum, but this part of the proposal was not implemented.