Philip Edward Pilditch [also known as Sir Philip Edward Pilditch] was born in Compton near Plymouth, Devon, England on 12 August 1861. In c.1880 he began working as a clerk in a firm of auctioneers in London. He also took classes at Kings College London. In the 1891 England census he gave his occupation as Architect and Surveyor. By the 1890s he had formed an architectural partnership with Spencer Dyson Chadwick (c.1875-1920) as Pilditch, Chadwick & Co. with an office at 2 Pall Mall East, London. The partnership was dissolved in April 1903 following Chadwick's retirement, however, Pilditch continued to run the firm under its original title, and by 1915 had offices at 6, 7 and 8 Old Bond Street, London.
P. E. Pilditch appears not to have qualified as an architect. His son, Philip Harold Pilditch (1890-1949), however, trained as an architect at Cambridge University and in the mid-1920s became partner in Pilditch, Chadwick & Co.
In 1907 P. E. Pilditch was elected to London County Council of which he was Vice Chairman in 1913-14, and from 1918 to 1931 served as Member of Parliament for Spelthorne in Middlesex. He was knighted in 1918.
His address was given as 1 Martinearn Road, Islington, London in 1881; 10 Upper Phillimore Place, Kensington in 1891; Mansfield, Weybridge, Surrey in 1901; and Bartropps, Weybridge, St George's Hill, Surrey in 1948. He died in Weybridge, Surrey on 17 December 1948.