Wadham Pigott Williams

Wadham Pigott Williams was a 19th-century English clergyman and writer associated with Somerset. The most clearly confirmed detail about his life from readily available sources is that he served as vicar of Bishop’s Hull near Taunton and published A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire in 1873, working with material gathered alongside William Arthur Jones.

That glossary is the work he is remembered for today. In its preface, he explains that he was asked by the Somersetshire Archaeological Society to compile a record of the county’s dialect, and the book shows a clear wish to preserve words and expressions that he felt were disappearing under the pressures of modern education and communication.

Reliable biographical information beyond those points is scarce in the sources I could confirm here, so it is safest to see him as a careful local historian of language as well as a parish priest. For listeners drawn to older regional speech, his writing offers a direct window into the sounds and habits of Somerset in the Victorian period.