Chilcot was educated at Bath Charity School, whose headmaster, Henry Dixon, had a strong interest in church music.
As City musician in fashionable Bath, Chilcot rapidly established a remarkable relationship with many noble families, attracting their patronage and subscriptions to his publications.
As well as his work at the Abbey, Chilcot organised and directed some ambitious choral concerts (at which he played his own concertos) and appears also to have run a small instrument hire business.
Almost no public notice was taken of his death and a complicated disagreement over Chilcot's estate meant that none of the elaborate arrangements that the composer had made for his own funeral procession, monument and memorial trusts, was ever carried out.
2 (February 2000), 4–13 Tim Rishton: 'The twelve harpsichord concertos of Thomas Chilcot', Early Keyboard Journal Vol 23 (2005), 33-66