The Hills of Rookwood: An Exceptional Sporting Family
Martin Chandler |Published: 2025
Pages: 175
Author: Hignell, Andrew
Publisher: ACS
Rating: 3.5 stars
The ACS Lives in Cricket series reached 64 with this one, released late last year. It is something of a variation on a theme as rather than a biography of one or two individuals it looks at an entire family, and indeed a number of other individuals within their orbit as well.
The Hills were a wealthy family, their fortune made in the shipping industry and Rookwood House was the palatial residence in Cardiff built by Edward Stock Hill. Edward was a keen cricketer and played a major role in the creation of Fairwater Cricket Club.
Author Andrew Hignell, one of the most accomplished cricket historians there is, has thoroughly researched the history of the family and in the opening chapters explains the dynasty and how Rookwood and the Fairwater Club came into being. There is also a chapter, and some interesting appendices that move away from the family, and look at the great and the good who turned out for Fairwater over the years
A good deal of the book is taken up with the life story of the most accomplished cricketer from the Hill family, Vernon, one of Edward’s sons. Vernon’s route to First Class cricket was a traditional one for a man with his background. He was educated at Winchester and then went up to Oxford before playing for Somerset as an amateur. Altogether his First Class career stretched from 1891 to 1912, but there were only 140 appearances, the majority during his student days.
Vernon was an all-rounder, a big hitter with the bat and a fast medium bowler. His First Class career stats are modest, but there were certainly some highlights along the way, including two tours of North America, all carefully described.
Outside the game Vernon’s life was an interesting one. He qualified as a barrister, but did not practice for long before embarking on a successful business career. In time he became a magistrate, but one suspects appearing before him as advocate or defendant would not have been an enjoyable experience. He seems not to have been a pleasant man with, quite literally, the milk of human kindness being in short supply.
But to be fair to Vernon he was clearly not a man lacking in courage. Despite being 43 and well established when the Great War began he was commissioned into the Army and spent more than four years as an officer, seeing action in France. He also knew some interesting people, not least one William Corfield, a friend of his father. Corfield ran away from home aged eight and became a cabin boy. Clearly an ambitious young man Corfield survived six shipwrecks in various parts of the world whilst working his way up to a position where he was rubbing shoulders with the Hill family in business.
But there were other interesting family members as well as Edward and Vernon. Both of Vernon’s brothers, Eustace and Percy, were First Class cricketers as were his two sons, Evelyn and Melvyn the latter, a wicketkeeper, being a member of the MCC touring side under Arthur Gilligan that visited India in 1926/27. In addition Vernon’s sister Constance was, at Fairwater, heavily involved in the earliest days of women’s cricket something which, perhaps not entirely surprisingly, she appears to have taken her leave of after her marriage.
The Hills of Rookwood: An Exceptional Sporting Family provides an illuminating glimpse into the lives of an interesting family and a way of life that disappeared many years ago. It is well worth investing in.
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