A Letter from the New President
At the Annual General Meeting of the Society on May 15th, the assembled members were good enough to elect me as President for the ensuing year in succession to Frank Jessup, an honour which I had never expected to have conferred upon me when, much to my surprise, I was elected a Vice-President twelve months previously, but which I accepted with pleasure as the culmination of some fifty years and more of work in the field of antiquarian and archaeological studies. Though I can claim to be the first priest ever to have held the office of President, a study of the volumes of Archaeologia Cantiana reveal how many were the clergy of the Church of England who little more than half a century ago worked for our Society in various offices and contributed learned articles year by year to Arch. Cant. I am glad that I can form a link with an earlier age for I fear that antiquarian studies do not seem to attract the clergy of the present day to any great extent as they once did.
I joined the Society in 1936 immediately after my ordination in the Cathedral to the title of Buckland in Dover. As a schoolboy at the King's School I had fallen in love with the Cathedral and at the age of eleven wrote (in pencil) a guide for my parents (which still survives somewhere). In my last year at school I won a prize essay on the Town and Port of Fordwich and went up to Oxford to read History, devoting all my spare time to collecting materials for a magisterial book on the Stained Glass of Oxford Colleges and Churches (still lying in manuscript unpublished in a drawer in my study). Years of hard work in a suburban parish in South London during, and long after, the Second World War gave little leisure for antiquarian pursuits until returning to Canterbury in 1957 as Vicar of St. Gregory's, and later the parishes of the City Centre, brought me into close touch with a field of antiquarianism that has been little explored, namely the ancient Hospitals and Almshouses of Canterbury, and lecturing on this theme and publishing papers for the enlightenment of the many folk interested has been a pleasant alternative to writing and lecturing about the ancient glass of the Cathedral all over Kent and further afield. Soon after election as a F.S.A in 1974 I began my ministry as a Canon Residentiary of the Cathedral with the publication of Christ's Glorious Church, a history of the Cathedral. I shall bring that ministry to an end (seven years later) this winter with the publication of The Six Preachers of Canterbury Cathedral on which I have been engaged since I became a Six-Preacher eighteen years ago.
In retirement I hope to devote a lot of time to the affairs of the Society. Since I have never held office on the Council I can approach the present state of the Society with a measure of detachment and strive to be a reconciling influence which will help to enable us all to enjoy the benefits of the financial resources which have accrued to K.A.S. as a result of the Margary bequest. I trust that I may win the confidence of Council and ordinary members alike as one who wishes to see our venerable and honourable Society free of faction, with all members united in the advancement of those archaeological and antiquarian studies and pursuits that are so rewarding and enjoyable an aspect of life to those prepared to devote energy of body and mind alike to them; these are, of course, the objects for which our Society has existed for nearly a hundred and twenty-five years. Long may it flourish.
Derek Ingram Hill
