Charolette (Pilfold) Grove
British, died 1828
Person TypeIndividual
BiographyCharlotte Pilfold, whose birthdate is unknown, was the daughter of Bathia White of Horsham and her husband Admiral Charles Pilfold of Effingham, Surrey, who commanded one of Nelson's ships at Trafalgar. Her sister Elizabeth (1763-1846), wife of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart., was the mother of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. In February 1781 Charlotte Pilfold married Thomas Grove (1758-1847) of Ferne, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, who had educated at University College, and admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1780. A keen fox hunter, he was probably the unnamed friend to whom Peter Beckford addressed his classic Thoughts on Hunting in 1781. Charlotte Grove raised a large family of ten children. The diaries of two of her daughters provide a record of the plays, art exhibitions, and social calls that absorbed her life during the early nineteenth century. One of her chief interests was the erection of a new house at Ferne, which began in 1811. She died on April 12, 1828. Her husband, a master of hounds for Wiltshire, survived her by almost twenty years but did not remarry.
