Richard L. Hills

Richard Leslie Hills MBE (1 September 1936 – 10 May 2019) was an English historian and clergyman who wrote extensively on the history of technology, particularly steam power. He helped to found Manchester's Science & Industry Museum, where he was its first lecturer-in-charge.

Background Hills was born on 1 September 1936 in Lee Green, the second son of the Rev. Leslie Hills and Margaret Magdalen Miller ("Peggy"), daughter of John Ontario Miller. His mother died of cancer when he was two, and he spent his childhood in the care of an aunt in Tunbridge Wells.

His father Leslie Hills (1897–1983) was the elder son of Henry Hills of Kingsfield, Matfield, in 1938 a director of the brewers E. Robin & Son, and was born at Maidstone. He was educated at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate, and then served in World War I as an officer in the Royal Field Artillery, being awarded the Military Cross. He then went to Queens' College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1920, and Ridley Hall. He was ordained deacon in the Church of England in 1921, and priest the following year. From 1921 to 1924 he was a curate in St Helens. From 1924 he was in the Sudan, for the first year as a chaplain and then at Juba for the Church Missionary Society to 1927.

In 1927 Leslie Hills returned to the United Kingdom, as a curate at Luton. That year he became vicar of Christ Church, Rotherhithe.

Leslie Hills was an army chaplain during World War II, proceeding from OCTU to Operation Aerial, and the evacuation of Saint-Nazaire with the Brigade of Guards. In 1960 he became vicar of West Malling.

Education Hills attended Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey.

Postgraduate into research After he had completed a Dip. Ed. at Cambridge, Hills spent brief period teaching. It included a spell at Worcester College for the Blind. He then carried out a year's research into fen drainage at Imperial College, London, and awarded the D.I.C.. He then in 1968 became the first curator of the Science & Industry Museum in Manchester. He decided to concentrate on mill engines of medium size that would still be impressive — they could be demonstrated under steam from a modern package boiler — and that the museum would collect exhibits they could not display immediately. The first Chief Engineer with whom he worked was Frank Wightman, who began as an apprentice at George Saxon & Co in 1927. Hills described him as

a really experienced millwright of the old school, who needed all the tricks he had learnt over the years to effect the removal of these engines.

Cleric In 1983, Hills took early retirement on grounds of poor health, that year becoming a Fellow of the Museums Association. He trained to serve in the Church of England, studying at St Deiniol's Library. He was ordained deacon in 1987 and became a curate at Urmston. He was ordained priest in 1988. He moved to Great Yarmouth for a year in 1989, still as a curate. From 1990 to 2001 he was a non-stipendiary minister at Mottram in Longdendale.

Hills continued to write on the history of technology, and published a three volume biography of James Watt. Hills was also Honorary Reader in History of Science and Technology at UMIST.

Publications

with David Patrick reprinted 2015

Family and last years While working as curate at St Michael and All Angels Church, Mottram in Longdendale, Hills met Bernice Pickford