The sound of footsteps on cobbled streets in the dead of night was a familiar sound in Margate during the autumn of 1920. The Reverend David Railton MC, the newly installed vicar of the town, frequently walked the streets unable to sleep, his mind ravaged by the memory of what he had witnessed during the war where he served as a chaplain on the western front.
Just a few days after one of these night-time strolls, on the anniversary of Armistice Day, Railton was at Westminster Abbey to see his flag, a Union Jack he had carried throughout the war, hung above the grave of the ‘Unknown Warrior’. A year earlier, the flag had been used to cover the coffin of the Unknown Warrior on his final journey from Victoria Station to Westminster Abbey.
David Railton first thought of the idea of creating a tomb for an unidentified soldier in 1916 in the village of Erquinghem-Lys near Armentieres in northern France.
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