Rev Walter Henry Hill
Pioneering Naturalist at Southminster
Rev Walter Henry Hill was
born in 1796 to Walter and Clarissa Hill who were a wealthy
family living at the Rocklands in Goodrich, Hertfordshire.
He took his MA at Emmanuel
College, Cambridge University before following a religious career.
As a mark of his appreciation
of his time at Emmanuel College in 1827 on his graduation he
presented the college with a claret jug to be included in their
valuable plate.
In 1831 he married Elizabeth
Isaacson who was descended from the wealthy Leigh family of
Leatherlake House, Runnymead, Surrey although her branch of the
family had moved to Monmouth, Wales where she was born.
Rev Hill and his new wife then took up residence at Southminster as the Curate for the Parish Church under the Vicar - Rev Alexander Scott
.Rev Hill was to remain at
Southminster until 1839.
While at Southminster he
became very interested in the wildlife of this area and became one
of the first men to keep records of his finds which he shared with
other enthusiasts.
His interest became well
known and unusual specimens were brought to the Church by local
residents.
An example of this was in
February 1835 when he made the following observation to the
Naturalist Magazine
CRUSTACEOUS ANIMALS The Spider Crab seen in a State Ecdysis or
Moulting A few days since a spider crab was alive to me taken in the
act of changing its coat The was singular The upper and lower shell
being the legs were withdrawn from their old cases and as a lever to
detach the under shell from the upper exertion of the legs was
necessary to raise the upper this had been accomplished but it was
not entirely from the body when brought to me The body was soft and
the new skin of about the consistence of parchment in fact the
change was almost completed .
Shortly after Loudens's
Magazine published a list of Birds that he had observed in and
around Southminster.
His pioneering observations
were one of the foundations on which the work of the Essex Field
Club was built nearly 50 years later.
In 1840 Rev Hill and his wife
returned to the Welsh Borders owning 9 plots of land in Llangarren ,
Herefordshire .
He enjoyed a long retirement
before dying at Monmouth in 1867.
He is reported to have died from drowning in a shallow stream while trout fishing, preseumably after a collapse of some sort.
The Hill family remained in
the family home at Monmouth until Walter Guy Hill who was the son of
Walter and Elizabeth died in 1906.
Rev Hill had to endure a
national scandal concerning his mother’s Sister Isabella.
Isabella married a wealthy
Danish Business called Lens Wolff who became the Danish Consul in
London.
During this period she became
very friends with a Sir Thomas Lawrence who was a prominent artist.
He painted a fine portrait of
her in 1803 which was commissioned by Clarissa Hill
Rumours abounded of an affair
especially when in 1810 Isabella separated from her husband and
moved to Kent.
The gossip reached such a
pint that in 1821 she moved to the family home in Monmouth and was
only visited twice by Lawrence before her death in 1829 aged about
60.
On her death Lawrence was
grief stricken although both continued to deny an affair.
