Nelson Everard Dixon
Rank: Sub-Lieutenant.
Service Number:
Date of Birth: 24 July 1913
Regiment: H.M.S. Willamette Valley, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve
Date of Death: 29 June 1940
Age at death: 26
Cemetery / Memorial: Chatham Naval Memorial
Country: Kent, UK
Grave / Reference: 40, 2
Relatives: Son of F.E and Viva Dixon, Master of Essex and Suffolk Foxhounds.
Address: The Moat, Hadleigh, Suffolk.
Nelson Everard Dixon was born in the Kensington District of London in the third quarter of 1913. He was the son of Frank Everard Dixon who married Viva Woodin in the first quarter of 1904. The 1911 Census report that the 36 year old ship owner Frank Dixon, born Clapham, London was living at Stable Lodge, 41 Hyde Park, London with his wife of seven years, Viva (age 28, born in Brighton) and their first child, daughter Nora (age 5, born Kensington).
Nora was for a time a child model and there are photographs of her at the National Portrait Gallery.
Source: National Portrait Gallery
Nelson’s father died in 1917 and his mother remarried in 1919. She married Norman Holbrook VC, a Royal Navy Officer . The photo below from 1920 shows Norman, Viva and we think the young Nelson.
Nelson Everard Dixon Esq.
This picture shows Viva Holbrook (nee Woodin b.1882 – d.1952). It was painted by Sir Frank Dicksee in 1924. A socialite, she was often written about in the London papers for the beautiful gowns she wore or the parties she attended with the King and Queen.
Norman Holbrook was the first Submariner to be awarded a VC. As a 26 years old lieutenant in the Royal Navy during the First World War he led a daring mission on 13 December 1914 at the Dardanelles, Turkey. He was in command of the submarine HMS B11, an old and obsolete craft built in 1905. Notwithstanding the difficulties of a treacherous current in the Dardanelles, he dived under five rows of mines and torpedoed and sank the Ottoman ironclad Mesûdiye, which was guarding the mine-field. In spite of being attacked by gunfire and torpedo boats, Holbrook succeeded in bringing the B11 back to the Mediterranean. When they got back to safety the B11 had been submerged for nine hours.
It is unlikely that Nelson would have remembered anything of his father as he died when Nelson was only 4 years old. Although his father was a ship owner and it was his father who named him Nelson, maybe naming him after the great British naval hero.
He attended Charterhouse School, Godalming from 1927 to 1932 and in October of 1932 he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge as a pensioner, meaning that he paid his own tuition and common fees.
We are not sure how and why he came to live in Hadleigh, but by 1935 he is living at The Moat, (now Priory Hall) on Benton Street. He became the Master of the Essex and Suffolk Foxhounds and took an interest in the community.
In October in 1935 at a meeting in the King’s Head Hotel at the invitation of Nelson, the Hadleigh and District Dart League was formed. This popular league continues to this day and every year on the final day of the league, the portrait of Nelson is hung in the hall.
Nelson was also a keen horseman who owned some winning race horses.
The Irish Grand National is a 3 mile 5 furlong handicap steeplechase for horses 5 years and over. It is run at Fairyhouse, Ratoath, Co. Meath.
‘Artesian’ and ‘Lucky Patch’ were not the only winning horses owned by Nelson. In 1939, his horse, ‘Shaun Peel’ won the Irish Grand Nation at
At the outbreak of WW2, Nelson volunteers for active service with the Royal Navy. At the time of the 1939 Census on 18 September, Nelson was staying at Greenhill Hotel, 8 Greenhill, Weymouth with six other Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves.
The 1939 National Register was a mini-census which was used to do a stocktake of the nations’ skills, (with the view to making best use of the available resources in the event of war) and as the basis for the issue of ID cards and ration books. After the war it was used as a register for the National Health Service and continued to be used until the system was computerised in the early nineties. Known deaths and change of name were manually captured. It was this part of the register that entered the public domain via a Freedom of Information request. However entries where the person were still believed to be alive at the time the manual system was closed down and if they were less than a 100 years old were officially closed. Layout also leaves much to be desired, with location restricted to the relevant Urban or Rural District Council rather than village, town or city. It also doesn’t set out relationships, so these need to be inferred.
Excerpt from 1939 census
Nelson was in Weymouth while undergoing his naval training. He appears in the December 1939 Navy List, listed as a Temporary Sub-Lieutenant with a seniority date of 18 Sept 1939.
