Blackmore. The Pigott Family

A Military Family in Blackmore

Bruno Giordan

The name "Sec Lieut GW Pigott R.F.A." is recorded among those who died in the First World War on the War Memorial.  Who was G. W. Pigott, and what is his connection with Blackmore?

Our story starts in Ireland.  Wellesley Pole Pigott was born in Queens County (now County Laois, Leinster) Ireland, in 1812, the youngest son of Sir George Pigott.  He started his studies at Brasenose College, Oxford University, in 1828, at the age of 15.  Like so many university graduates of that era, he entered the church, and held the living of Bemerton, by Salisbury, until his death in 1890.

In 1858, he married Fanny Granville, and their son Wellesley was born in 1861.  Up to this point, family connections are with Ireland and Hampshire, and have nothing to do with Blackmore.  But the young Wellesley decided to follow his grandfather, Major-General Thomas Pigott, into the military.  In 1891 he married Helen, the daughter of Captain Thomas Donaldson of County Galway, and the widow of Frederick Ind.  She had married Frederick Ind in 1883.  There is no record of any children and Frederick seems to have died abroad, possibly on military service. 

In 1894, Wellesley Pigott had the rank of captain, and was adjutant to the 3^rd Volunteer Battalion, Essex Regiment.  In 1901, the family were living at Blackmore House, Hook End, and by 1914, now Lieutenant Colonel, he was an important member of the community -- magistrate, major landowner, and chairman of the Ongar Rural District Council Education Committee.

The G. W. Pigott of the War Memorial was born in South Weald in 1896, Gerald Wellesley Pigott.  He was their only son.  He was sent to school at Wellington College, and at the age of 18 to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich.  On 15^th August 1914, eleven days after Britain had declared war on Germany, he was commissioned 2^nd Lieutenant in the 3^rd Battalion Essex Regiment, transferred five months later to the Royal Field Artillery, and posted to the 127^th battery at the front in March 1915.  At Brielen, during the second battle of Ypres, on 13^th May 1915, he was hit in the head by shrapnel.  He was taken to the dressing station, and from there to no.2 clearing station at Bailleul, where he died the following day, aged 18.

Despite his father’s army rank, a request for Gerald’s body to be brought home for burial in Essex was refused. Government policy was to bury casualties near to where they fell, and he is buried in the British Officers’ Cemetery, Bailleul. Instead, and unusually, a Memorial Service was held in his honour at All Saints church, Doddinghurst.

Gerald Pigott's death at such an early age was depressingly common.  His father, Wellesley Pigott, survived the war.  But he had to face the fact that he had lost his only child, and his response was to make sure that he was recorded on the monuments both of Blackmore and of Doddinghurst.  But the saddest story is that of Helen Pigott, who had lost her first husband in the 1880s, probably in military service abroad, and then her only child.  She even had to petition the authorities in 1921 for her son's war medals.