War Memorial
William Edward Frost was born at Penshurst in Kent, his birth being recorded in the spring of 1886. He was the second son of Stephen and Sophia Frost, whose maiden name had been Sears. By the time of the 1901 census the household included three brothers and two sisters, and William himself was working as a teamster on a farm.
On 14 August 1909 he married Ellen, the daughter of the Nye family. When war came he was living in Leigh and enlisted at Tunbridge Wells. He first served with the Hunts Cyclists Battalion under the number 291210, and was later posted to the 2/4th London Regiment before joining the 1st Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), by which time his number had become either 225561 or 225562. His service earned him three campaign medals.
William was killed in action on 25 April 1918 and lies buried at Crucifix Corner Cemetery near Villers-Bretonneux in the Somme region of France. His son Kenneth Gordon Frost, born in 1918, lived until 2003. William is commemorated on the Chiddingstone Causeway War Memorial and on the memorial at Edenbridge Hospital.