A GROUP of staff, parents and pupils from King’s College, Taunton, visited the battlefields of Flanders to pay tribute to the 82 former students killed in the First World War.

They toured the Western Front in parts of eastern France and Belgium during their four-day trip.

Thanks to the recently published Book of Remembrance 1914-18, edited by former student Chris Warren, who accompanied them, they retraced the movements of many old King’s students to lay 18 memorial crosses, organised by school archivist Alison Mason and designed and made in the King’s College Design Technology Centre.

Among those killed was Frederick Cancellor, aged 17 when he died at Vimy Ridge in 1916 - at King’s he was in the debating society, took the part of the Earl of Cambridge in the 1913 production of Henry V, was a cadet in the Officers’ Training Corps.

Colin Selwyn, who died at Passchendale in 1917, was a prefect and colour sergeant in the Officers’ Training Corps, as well as taking part in the King’s Review at Windsor in 1911, played cricket and football for the 1st XI and held the high jump and long jump records for several years.

Current students laid crosses and wreaths at the Thiepval Memorial, on the Somme, where three former King’s students are named, and at the Menin Gate Last Post ceremony at Ypres, where six are listed.