Catalogue description Alan Hill Collection

Scrap books relating to Hill's life and career, mainly relating to his racing of motorcycles but also correspondence relating to his later career's following the war. Probably assembled by his wife or another family member.

Open to bone fide researchers. By appointment only.

• Hill, Benjamin Alan, b 1892
• Motor vehicles

Benjamin Alan Hill was born at Buckhurst Hill, Essex in 1892. He learned to ride when he was aged eleven on his brother's machine - an old Bollee tricar. He competed under the name of Alan Hill. Although he was lame in one leg he competed in pre-war days on Indian and Rudge motor cycles and the Humberette cycle car. He won a medal in his first trial at the age of 16 in the London-York-London race; in the 1910 London-Exeter Winter Run he rode a prototype model Rudge-Whitworth and produced a creditable performance; and won a silver cup in 1911 for the best aggregate performance in the A.C.U. Quarterly Trials. In the London-Landsend Run from 14-17 April 1911 Hill won a Gold Medal, and in the Spring Quarterly Trial at Sutton Bank, Yorkshire he finished first in the heavyweight class. His other interests were photography and rowing. Hill was a member of the Motor Cycle Club, the British Motor Cycle Racing Club, the Essex Motor Club and the Junior Car Club. He was employed by the Rudge Motor Company, the Rover Motor Company as a Service Engineer, the Rhode Motor Company in Sales, Service, Repairs and Spares, and by Iliffe & Son in the Technical Editorial Department. At the beginning of the First World War he served for six months with the British Red Cross Society as an ambulance driver, and served in France as a Motor Transport Driver from October 1914 until February 1915, when he was invalided home. In March 1917 Hill attended the Reading School of Instruction for Equipment Officers in the RFC and afterwards was in charge of a motor cycle repair depot in England as Sec. Lt. in the Special Reserve of Officers attached to the RFC and later the RAF. On 1 September 1917 he married Dora M. Nicholls at All Saints Church, High Wycombe. They had two children, a daughter Betty Melinda Eileen Hill, born in 1918, and a son John. Having been passed unfit for further service and on indefinite leave pending discharge Hill entered the Scottish Six Days Race in 1919 in a G.P.Morgan with his wife Dollie as passenger. After the war he became Publicity, Advertising and Sales Promotion Manager to the Standard Motor Company, Editor of the Standard Car Review and Secretary of the Standard Car Owners' Club.

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