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Rosalind Mary Theodosia Hill (14 November 1908 – 11 January 1997) was an English historian who for 39 years was a lecturer, Reader and Professor in History at Westfield College, a constituent college of the University of London. Rosalind Mary Theodosia Hill - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Hill was educated at the Downs School in Seaford in Sussex before studying history at St Hilda's College, Oxford (1928–1931), where she gained a first-class degree in modern history Obituary for Rosalind Hill, St Hilda's College report and chronicle (1997–1998), pgs. 137–142 before taking a Bachelor of Letters degree in 1932 with a thesis on English Ecclesiastical Letter-Books of the Thirteenth Century which was privately printed in 1937. Rosalind Hill (1908–1997) - Crusader Studies - Queen Mary University of London For a short period she taught medieval history at University College, Leicester, where John H. Plumb was among her students.
Plumb later wrote of her:
In 1937 Hill was appointed a lecturer in History at Westfield College, and here she was to remain for the rest of her academic career as lecturer (1937–1955); Reader in History (1955–1971); and Professor of History (1971–1976), retiring as Professor Emerita and Vice-Principal. As a scholar and researcher she was particularly active in her work with medieval bishops' registers, especially those of Oliver Sutton of Lincoln in The Rolls and Register of Bishop Oliver Sutton 1280–1299 (published in eight volumes, 1948–1986), and for her edition of the first chronicle of the First Crusade, Gesta Francorum et Aliorum Hierosolimitanorum (1962). Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum - edited by Rosalind Hill - The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Cambridge University Press Her love of animals was expressed in her pamphlet Both Small and Great Beasts (1953) written on behalf of the University Federation for Animal Welfare and illustrated by the cartoonist Fougasse and which explored the treatment of animals during the Middle Ages. She was Secretary (1963–1973) and President (1973–1974) of the Ecclesiastical History Society Past Presidents - Ecclesiastical History Society and Editor and Chairman of the Canterbury and York Society. She was also a member of the seminars on the Crusades at the Institute of Historical Research.
At Westfield College Hill worked with Mary Stocks (principal of Westfield College 1939-1951) who had been heavily involved in women's suffrage. Hill was interviewed about Stocks and their time at Westfield College, by the historian, Brian Harrison, as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews
After retiring Hill shared a house with former Westfield colleagues Christina Barratt and Gwen Chambers at 7 Loom Lane in Radlett in Hertfordshire and here she died of heart failure on 11 January 1997 aged 88 Rosalind Mary T Hill in the England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916–2007 - Ancestry.com before being cremated at St Albans. She never married.
For a full bibliography of Hill's publications to 1978, see Medieval Women: Dedicated and Presented to Professor Rosalind M T Hill on the Occasion of her Seventieth Birthday, ed D Baker, Studies in Church History: Subsidia 1 (Oxford, 1978), pp 381–385.
She was very young and nervous: she fluttered her papers, talked too quickly, and went pink-cheeked with terror, yet she managed to bring the medieval world alive. She knew the problems it was vital for a young historian to know about. ... I never missed a lecture. Medieval history sprang to life and I became, and remained, an addict.J. Plumb, ‘Triumph of the good over medieval’, Times Higher Education Supplement (8 July 1994), pg. 17
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Categories: 1908 Births, 1997 Deaths, 20th-century English Women Writers, 20th-century English Historians, Academics Of The University Of Leicester, Academics Of Westfield College, Alumni Of St Hilda's College, Oxford, British Animal Welfare Scholars, English Women Historians, English Pamphleteers, Daughters Of Baronets, Presidents Of The Ecclesiastical History Society, People From Neston
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