STRATHBLANE FIRST WORLD WAR PROJECT: 20 ROBERT RIGG, CORPORAL GORDON HIGHLANDERS, AGED 21.
from the archives of Strathblane Heritage Society.
“Barely three weeks before John Rigg heard that Robert had been killed, his employer had received the dreaded telegram informing him of the death of his own son Jack in another part of the Western Front.”
One of the most illuminating aspects of the Strathblane First World War project has been uncovering the many close links between the men on the war memorial. For instance, there is no doubt that Corporal Robert Rigg knew Lieutenant Jack Barr (see No 1) for the simple reason that Robert’s father was the Barr family’s chauffeur and the Riggs lived in a cottage on their property at Westerton of Mugdock.
Jack’s father, the brilliant engineer Professor Archibald Barr, was an early car enthusiast and one of the first men in the district to own one. Each day in the years before the war, as he travelled back and forth between Mugdock and Glasgow University or the new Barr & Stroud factory at Anniesland, the man at the steering wheel was John Rigg.
However, by the summer of 1915 the professor and his chauffeur would share far more than a passion for automobiles.
The journey of the Rigg family from the 19th to the 20th century exemplifies a transport revolution that was happening throughout Britain at the time. Robert’s father John had been born in England but was working as a groom on an estate in the Scottish borders in the 1890s when he fell for Isabella Jackson, daughter of a gamekeeper from near Langholm in Dumfriesshire. They married in 1892 at Wrae.
Robert was born there the following year, by which time John had taken employment as a coachman at Culter near Biggar in Lanarkshire. Robert’s brothers Thomas and John were born there in 1896 and 1903 respectively. By the time Robert’s sister Nellie appeared in 1906, the family had settled on the Craigallian Estate in the parish of Strathblane, though John was still working as a coachman. (Another man on the memorial worked on this estate as a gardener. See No 13.) In 1907 Robert would have been 13 and still at school as the school leaving age had been raised recently to 14. It must have been a long walk to and from Blanefield each day.
It was probably the following year that the Rigg family moved again, this time to nearby Mugdock as John swapped horse power for horsepower by becoming chauffeur to Prof Barr. The Barr family had just moved into the big house at Westerton and the Riggs were accommodated in a cottage in the grounds, where we find them in the 1911 Census.
Prof Barr had a passion for motor cars. He was an early member of the Scottish Auto Club and in 1901 had organised the first Motor Car Reliability Trials to be held in Scotland. He had purchased his first car (an Argyll, built in Bridgeton) at the turn of the century and had progressed to a variety of other models by the outbreak of war including an Albion, a Delaunay-Belleville and a Straker-Squire.
By 1911, though he probably visited his parents in Mugdock, 17-year old Robert was back in his birthplace near Langholm, living with his maternal grandfather, Thomas Jackson, and perhaps assisting him in his job as a gamekeeper. He was there when war broke out and promptly enlisted in Langholm, the burgh known as the “Muckle Toun”. He joined the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders and quickly achieved the rank of corporal, arriving in France on February 16 1915 to join his battalion.
The 2nd Bn Gordon Highlanders became part of 20th Brigade in the 7th Division. Robert and his fellow servicemen were deployed to the Neuve Chapelle Area of northern France, south of the Aubers Ridge close to the village of Festubert. This area of flat marshy ground, crisscrossed with 15 foot wide drainage ditches, was at the south western edge of the German salient that had been punched into French territory the previous year. The allied intention was to reclaim it and in particular the barely perceptible shoulder of strategic high ground known as the Aubers Ridge.
The attack on Aubers Ridge commenced on May 9 but was completely unsuccessful, due to a shortage of heavy ammunition, heavier than expected German resistance and appalling conditions following heavy rain.
The second phase of the attack subsequently known as the Battle of Festubert started late on May 16. Following artillery bombardment and initial attacks by other units, the 2nd Battalion mounted a night time attack on an 850-yard wide front. The battle continued until the movement was finally arrested by 9am, with the men in the most advanced positions under intensive German shellfire.
May 17 was a day of heavy rain and low cloud. It was also the day Robert Rigg died of his wounds. He was one of the 4,123 casualties sustained by 7th Division during the Battle of Festubert.
By May 25 the British Expeditionary Force had gained 1000 yards at a cost of 16,500 men. The limited success of the operation (and the Spring Offensive of 1915 in general) was blamed on extensive German fortifications, water logged low lying ground that made trench work extremely difficult and the apparently limited supply of adequate ammunition shells. The need for munitions in Gallipoli had diverted resources away from the Western Front, which led to the downfall of the Liberal Government in favour of a Coalition Administration with Lloyd George appointed as Minister of Munitions.
Robert was buried at Longuenesse Souvenir Cemetery close to St Omer in northern France. St Omer was the General Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force from October 1914 to March 1916. The town was the principal hospital centre for many service men, including those of the 7th Division. The inscription on Robert’s grave reads: “Sleep on beloved sadly missed”.
On June 4 the Milngavie & Bearsden Herald announced: “Intimation has been received by Mr and Mrs John Rigg, the Cottages, Westerton of Mugdock, Milngavie that their eldest son Corporal Robert Rigg of the 2nd Gordon Highlanders died on 17 May of wounds received in action in France.”
In addition to the inscription on the Strathblane War Memorial, Robert’s life is also commemorated on the Milngavie War Memorial and he was awarded the 1914/15 Star.
Barely three weeks before John Rigg heard that Robert had been killed, his employer received the dreaded telegram informing him of the death of his own son Jack in another part of the Western Front.
One wonders how far the two men – divided by social class and education but united in bereavement – managed to share their grief on those commuter journeys between Mugdock and Glasgow. And whether the two mothers – both called Isabella – sought to console one another.
The First World War was a pivotal period in the 20th century, during which social norms and class divisions were challenged. It is significant that while many war memorials make the distinction between officers and other ranks, the committee behind Strathblane War Memorial, which is likely to have included Prof Barr, viewed all those who made the ultimate sacrifice as equally worthy of commemoration.
The professor’s passion for cars remained undimmed and after the war he treated himself to a brown Daimler fitted with “a device for flattening raindrops”- reputedly the first windscreen wipers to be seen in Glasgow!
The Riggs lived on at Westerton after the war and both John and Isabella are buried in Strathblane. Despite battling ill-health, Robert’s father John continued to drive for the Barr family until his death from stomach cancer in 1926, aged 57. His mother Isabella eventually moved to Speirs Rd in Bearsden but survived to the age of 90, dying in 1960 of a heart condition. She had survived her eldest son by 45 years.