Additional general notes on the memorial
Lennox is also remembered with a marble tablet on the N wall of the church near the Lee family (front) pew. The inscription poignantly reads:
“To the loving memory of Lennox Cleland Lee Lee, 2nd Lieut, HM Irish Guards, Elder son of Lennox Bertram Lee, Lord of the Manor of How Caple. He was killed in action at Cuinchy near La Bassee, France, February 1st 1915 in the 22nd year of his age, and is buried near where he fell.”
His grave, along with those of some other British soldiers, is in the Cuinchy Communal Cemetery, marked by the standard CWGC white Portland headstone showing the badge of his regiment, his name, rank and age, with, at the foot, that his home was How Caple Court, Herefordshire.
Attached to the wall beside the tablet is Lennox’s original wooden grave cross. Above the cross is a stained-glass window, also inscribed to his memory, one panel of which depicts a kneeling armour- clad soldier and includes the Lee family coat of arms, the other including the badge of the Irish Guards. These badges also adorn the two matching red damask banners in the Gregory Chapel dedicated to Lennox’s memory in 1945. His name is also among the 1,157 old boys remembered on the
Great War memorial at his school, Eton College.
Lennox is mentioned in Rudyard Kipling’s history, “The Irish Guards in the Great War”. This records that 2nd Lt Lee joined his battalion on 28 November 1914 as one of a special reserve of 15 officers “seven of whom had done no sort of soldiering before the war”. On 1st February his company was ordered to help the Coldstream Guards attack an enemy position near Cuinchy. Almost immediately the company commander Lt Blacker-Douglass and young Lennox were both killed instantly by machine-gun fire and the other officers were wounded.