YORK CIVIC TRUST PLAQUES

Rigg Monument

Monument to six children of the Rigg family drowned in a boating accident on the River Ouse in August 1830

Location of plaque: St Lawrence's churchyard, off Lawrence Street

ON a summer's afternoon in August, 1830, seven brothers and sisters went boating on the River Ouse in York.

Nineteen-year-old Ann Rigg, her sisters Eliza, 17, and Jesse, eight, and her brothers Thomas, 18, John, 16, James, seven, and Charles, six, were the children of Walmgate seed merchant John Rigg and his wife Ann. With them in the boat was 18-year-old Grace Robinson and a Mr Seller, son of the landlord of the Falcon Inn.

There was no inkling of the tragedy to come as the Rigg children's boat rounded the bend in the river at Clifton Ings on their way to Poppleton.

Close by Acomb Landing, however, a boat with a large square sail approached from the other direction. The two men and a boy on board called out to warn the Riggs' pleasure boat to keep to one side. But it failed to do so. The sailing vessel collided with the Riggs' boat, stoving in the side and sending all but two survivors - eight-year-old Jesse Rigg and Mr Seller - to the bottom of the river. The other six Rigg children and Grace Robinson drowned.

The tragedy caused shockwaves and made local and national headlines. "Never, we believe, has it been before the painful duty of a public journalist to narrate so affecting an event connected with this city," declared the York Gazette and Herald on Saturday August 21.

Thousands of people lined the streets as the funeral procession wound its way through York on the Monday morning. Reports of the tragedy were published in newspapers across the country, and money was collected by public subscription to build a monument to the Rigg children in St Lawrence's churchyard off Lawrence Street. It had a fine stone base and surround; a brick back with two columns; and an ornate inscription on a marble plaque.

"Raised by friendship in memory of four sons and two daughters of John and Ann Rigg, of this city... who were drowned by their boat being run down on the River Ouse" said the inscription.

It gave the date of the tragedy - August 19, 1830 - and then launched into a poem:

"Mark the brief story of a Summer's Day!

"At noon, Youth, Health and Beauty launched away;

"Ere eve, Death wrecked the bark, and quenched their light..."

The Rigg monument became one of the great tourist attractions of early Victorian England. But the years passed, and gradually the monument was forgotten, becoming overgrown and dilapidated. In 2015, however, York Civic Trust put forward a proposal to restore it. The Trust raised £15,000, partly through crowd-funding, and the restoration of the monument was completed in spring 2017. The blue plaque attached to the monument says simply: "Rigg Monument, restored by public subscription, 2016."