I
am very sad to report that Carol suffered a massive
stroke early in April and died in hospital a few
days later. Her funeral and committal on Saturday
18 April 2015 was at St Michael and All Angels
church, Crux Easton, a short step from her home in
the Manor House.
On a glorious Spring afternoon her coffin was pulled
to the church at her request by a restored Ferguson
tractor, followed by a dense mass of mourners. As
her son Justin said in his eulogy:
“What
we are here to do is exactly as she wished – to bury
her in what she always spoke of as her own little
piece of England. Carol was born to Elsie Maud
Burgess and William Leonard Hill in St Pancras,
London in 1936 and her father, Captain Hill, bought
Crux Easton Farm and moved his family down here as
war broke out, which means that we have had an
association with Crux Easton for almost 80 years and
four generations.
Your presence is testament to a woman who was
invested in this place over her entire lifetime and
the fact that she will now lie here, in this place,
for evermore could not be more fitting.”
“One of the high points of Carol’s life was, along
with her sister Lyn and the Hampshire Mills Group,
to refurbish the Crux Easton Wind Engine and to
establish the Conservation Trust to care for it.
The Trust brought her much joy, not least through
her friendship and relationship with John Christmas,
with whom she spent the last years of her life in
loving companionship.”
