Katharine Frances Asquith (née Horner; 9 September 1885 – 9 July 1976) was an English landowner and patron of the arts.

"[7]: 113  Marriage, however, was not possible due to her parents' desire that Katharine see "a little more of the world and a few more potential husbands," and Raymond's inability to support a wife on his earnings from the law.

[12] In April 1918, Katharine's nursing career took her to the Duchess of Sutherland's Hospital at Saint-Omer, France, and the children were looked after by a nanny.

[13] While in France, Katharine movingly wrote her mother: "We drove back quite late we weren't very far from the front lines - say eight miles & the sky was lit by the guns - just like summer lightning & I felt that I saw just what Raymond & E must have seen every night.

"[8]: 370  Katharine never remarried, and Evelyn Waugh's biographer, Selina Hastings, commented that she "lived her life permanently in the shadow of her husband's death.

She welcomed many Catholic writers and thinkers such as Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Hollis, Douglas Woodruff, Siegfried Sassoon, Hilaire Belloc, Martin D'Arcy, and Ronald Knox.

Katharine first met Evelyn Waugh on a Hellenic cruise in September 1933 and struck up a close friendship that lasted until his death.

Another prominent convert, close friend and frequent visitor to Mells was the poet Siegfried Sassoon who was received into the Catholic Church in 1957 and later buried in St Andrew's churchyard.

[21] Both Katharine and Raymond are portrayed in Phoebe Traquair's apse mural in All Saints, Thorney Hill, Hampshire.