Lydia Cecilia Hill

Lydia Cecilia Hill (20 July 1913 – 11 October 1940), known as Cissie Hill or Cecily Hill, was an English cabaret dancer notable for being a favourite of Ibrahim, Sultan of Johor and for being briefly engaged to him. In 1901 the Benge grandparents were living at 32 Radigund Street (now St Radigund Street) in Canterbury Northgate. Living with them were their four sons, their daughter Florence Cecilia born in Canterbury in the first quarter of 1889, and George's married sister. Hill's mother was Florence Cecilia Hill nee Benge, married at the age of 21 on 20 December 1910 at St Gregory's Church, Canterbury. Hill's father was George Hill, R.N., born 11 December 1882 in Portsea: a leading seaman in 1910; He was called up from the Retired List in 1935 and served until 1946. Hill had an elder sister Etta Florence V. Hill, born 13 January 1912. Her family moved to Herne Bay by 1917 and lived at 4 Kingsbury Villas in Kings Road, Herne Bay, until 1927. She attended Kings Road School which has now been replaced by Herne Bay Junior School. Hill was performing by the age of 10 years. In April 1924, with another child, she performed two humorous songs at a concert at Herne Bay Institute and Sports Club. She was crowned May Queen at the school around 1923–1924. She would have left school in the summer of 1927, 14 years being the national school leaving age at the time. Between 1927 and 1934 the family lived at Hyacinth, Queensbridge Drive, Herne Bay. She trained as a dancer and joined the Grosvenor House cabaret, but has also been described as a minor actress, with platinum hair and blue eyes. The Herne Bay Press said: "She had a talent for dancing, and linked with it was a charming personality, so that for some years she enjoyed much popularity locally, appearing in dancing displays at the old Pier Theatre and elsewhere. Her attractiveness won her success as a dancer in London, where she appeared for several seasons in the West End." during part of his world tour that year. He left for continental Europe, but returned to the Grosvenor House Hotel on 6 September. Hill was appearing as a dancer in the floor show at the same hotel, and first met him there. in 1935 he gave £500,000 to the British Government for the defence of Singapore, and in 1940 he gave £250,000 towards the cost of World War II. He was also a six-foot-six-inch-tall playboy, On 20 July 1936, Hill and her mother Florence Cecilia Hill arrived at Southampton from Colombo on the ship Sibajak. According to local historian Harold Gough, she and the Sultan travelled frequently to Johor and Europe in the 1930s.

Sometime in 1937, robbers broke into Mayfair Court and stole £5,000-worth of jewellery from Hill's bedroom; this brought the affair with the Sultan into the public eye. S.I. was Sultan Ibrahim, but Hill's personal life had been private, and local rumour had invented an Indian maharajah to account for the Hill family's rise in fortune and for the building of Mayfair Court by a resting dancer in 1934. The publicity embarrassed the family, and Hill's mother Florence Hill told a Press reporter that "Lydia" had gone into hiding under medical care due to shock at public attitudes, and that they knew no maharajah. As they left England it was observed that Hill was wearing a large diamond engagement ring. The Melbourne Argus quoted from the Daily Express that:

"After the Sultan had divorced his wife recently he went to Ceylon and renewed his acquaintance there with Miss Hill, who was spending a holiday there with her mother. Later the Sultan, Miss Hill and her mother toured Sumatra. Yesterday they went to Singapore by air, presumably on their way to Johore." The Sultan stood publicly on the dock to wave goodbye, before returning to his playboy life in Sumatra. Such an engagement was not unique in east Kent in the 1930s. George Henry Milles-Lade, 4th Earl Sondes who lived at Sheldwich, married Pamela McDougall on 17 October 1939; she was understood to have been previously a Bluebell Girl.

The relationship continued, and in 1939 the Sultan was visiting Switzerland for his health, accompanied by Hill and her mother Florence.

Death

On 11 October 1940, several Messerschmitts were being chased over Kent in daylight by British fighter planes. The Messerschmitts dropped three bombs on six shops in Burgate, close to Canterbury Cathedral. At least six people were killed and more were injured; it took two days to dig out the dead from the debris. A furrier's received a direct hit, and Hill was killed instantly while shopping for a fur rug as a wedding or birthday gift. She was identified by her jewellery, said to be a gift from the Sultan. Apparently she and her friend Peggy Clark had left Herne Bay at 10.15 am to motor into Canterbury. The probate record says she was a spinster living at Mayfair Court, Herne Bay, that she left £16,970 0s 3d and that administration was given to her mother F.C. Hill, wife of George Hill. Her death was announced in The Times. Herne Bay, Kent. The Reverend A.W. Parry Williams officiated in the church and at the committal by the graveside; In plot BBR46 at the eastern edge of the cemetery is an elaborate, marble monument to her; it is blue and white like her house. It was paid for by the Sultan and adorned with a standing Saxon-style cross, a marble floor with an engraved poem and an iron fence.

Sultan Ibrahim owned her grave until his death at the Grosvenor House Hotel in May 1959. Her death is recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the certificate is inscribed, "remembered with honour".

Aftermath Hill was the Sultan's favourite until she died, and he said he was heartbroken. By 10 November 1940, the Sultan was telling the Sunday Pictorial: "I prefer to forget the past. It is for the future I want to live." Although it was funded by the Sultan,

Hill lived in Mayfair Court with her mother Florence from 1935 until her death in 1940, and from 1935 to 1937 her father George Hill lived there too. In 1937 she applied to build steps and a bedroom to a design by John Howell & Son over the garage at the south end of Mayfair Court. It was approved by the Council in September and completed by November 1937. In 1938 she applied to have a small greenhouse designed by the same architect; it was completed by 10 February 1939. At that time, Mayfair Court stood on an L-shaped plot of land; part of it is now built on. The greenhouse stood on the south-western corner, now occupied by garages. On 22 May 1939 the same architect was employed again to submit an application to build a concrete tube air raid shelter, possibly similar to the Stanton shelter. This was built at the bottom of the garden, parallel with Hampton Pier Avenue. Hill's sister and her husband lived at Mayfair Court in 1945, but moved to one of the associated houses in the 1950s (no.141) and to the other in the 1960s (no.139) until the sister left shortly after her husband's death in 1967; she died in 2005.

The survival of Mayfair Court as an architectural asset to its surroundings, and views thereof, has been fragile. In 1984 there were two applications to develop its land with the building of two or three more properties, but both were refused by Canterbury City Council.