The Grave Marker of Captain Eric Fox Pitt Lubbock
by Lorraine Evans - 11:08 on 03 September 2026
Perhaps one of the most remarkable military gravemarkers I have come across currently sits in High Elms Country Park, Surrey, carved to honour the life of Captain Eric Fox Pitt Lubbock, son of Lord Avebury of the High Elms Estate. Lubbock was a renowned Royal Flying Corps pilot, who was awarded the Military Cross in 1915 for ‘conspicuous gallantry and skill’ shown in the theatre of war when he shot down an Imperial Albatross – a biplane fighter flown by many top German combat aces. Two years after this event, Captain Lubbock was sadly killed in action when his own Sopwith Camel biplane was shot down over Belgium on 11 March 1917.
Racked with grief, his mother, Alice Lubbock, namely Lady Avebury, commissioned a stone replica of his plane to be erected, as a fitting memorial, in the family graveyard, alongside his brother and brother-in-law, who were also sadly lost in the Great War. The graveyard was initiated in 1916 when Alice Lubbock decided to create a more elaborate memorial to her husband John, the 1st Baron Avebury. She had his body exhumed from its previous grave in the churchyard and transferred, together with the imposing cross, to a consecrated plot in family owned woodlands about 100 yards from St Giles churchyard, in the parish of Farnborough.
After the end First World War, as was the want of many aristocratic dynasties, the Avebury family fell upon hard times and were forced to sell their estate to the local County Council. After decades of neglect by the local authority, which is not surprising in the least, in 1981 the family graveyard was disassembled, the gravestones were uprooted and what was left was relocated into the nearby grounds of St Giles’ Church. It was during this time that Lubbock’s aircraft gravemarker somehow went missing, some even believe that it had been stolen for profit. Albeit, certain documents do suggest that Bromley Council sold said aircraft gravemarker to a stonemason in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire. Even so, the process by which this transfer took place is rather opaque – obscured by history one might say. Bromley claim to have lost all correspondence relating to the matter and no one in the Lubbock family had any knowledge that it was happening at the time. According to Lyulph Lubbock, the current 5th Baron of Avebury, the gravemarker was being used to advertise the mason’s services. He states: ‘The mason wouldn’t say how he got hold of it and refused to give it back. In the end my father had to buy it back at auction for £8,000.’ And so, almost a century after its initial dedication, the airpane memorial was placed back where it belonged, at High Elms Country Park. It was re-consecrated in 2010, complete with an accompanying plaque that reads:
‘CAPT ERIC FOX PITT LUBBOCK/ KFC M.C./ SON OF JOHN BARON AVEBURY/ AND ALICE HIS WIFE/ BORN/ 16 MAY 1893/ KILLED IN ACTION 11 MAR 1917/ BURIED IN POPERINGHE/ BELGIUM’73
In 2018, to mark the centenary of the founding of the British Royal Air Force, Lubbock’s stone plane was officially recognised by Historic England as one of fourteen war memorials dedicated to British airmen who fought during the First and Second World Wars.
Captain Eric Fox Pitt Lubbock is buried at the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, in Plot X. A. 13, located near Poperinghe in West Flanders, Belgium. The text reads: NO WORK BEGUN SHALL EVER PAUSE FOR DEATH.
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