Frank Harrison Hill Exhibition

Frank Harrison Hill (1830-1910) was a BGS alumnus, and the nephew of local historian Pishey Thompson.

After leaving school, he qualified as a barrister and became a prominent journalist. He was the editor of the London-based "Daily News" from 1869 to 1886. Charles Dickens had been the newspaper's first editor, in 1845.

Through his will, Hill bequeathed £1,000 to the trustees of BGS. This was to be used to found and endow a Frank Harrison Hill Exhibition for one or more of the following subjects:

• Classics
• Mathematics
• Physics
• Natural Science
• Modern languages

The prize was originally a leaving scholarship to university. Since the 1980s it has usually conferred on the winner of the Parry Gold Medal.

The precise names and years of the winners before 1980 have been recorded as accurately as possible, but it appears that the awards were not always made at the time of the Speech Day and records are for the date of payment rather than the date of award, so some confusion can arise.

Year	Winner	Parry Gold Medallist in that year?
1915	Douglas Merson Steel	No (he won it the previous year, in 1914)
...
1957	Robert Sheehan	No (he won it in 1956)
1958	Edward A Hackford	No (he won it in 1957)
1959	Terence Allen Gibson	No
1960	Thomas D Gledhill	Yes
1961	Tom Grimes / D A Hines	No
1962	Richard Cammack (1954-62) / Christopher R Holmes	No (Richard Cammack won it in 1962 and Christopher Holmes won it in 1961)
1963	Frank Cammack (assumed) / Michael H Gledhill	Yes (Michael Gledhill)
1964	Michael J Cockerill	No
1965	Ken Balkow / David M Dexter	No
1966	Philip Martin Hollins	No (Philip Hollins won it in 1965)
1967	William J Worraker	No
1968	Jack Upsall	Yes
1969	V J Goose	No
1970	G P Blackbourn	No (he won it in 1969)
1971	Richard Gill / J H Wilford	No (Richard Gill won it in 1970)
1972	D P Baines / R J Leafe	No (D P Baines received the Parry Prize)
1973	Not awarded
1974	T Crick	No
1975	John Woodthorpe	No (he won it in 1974)
1976	John Woodthorpe (Listed twice but only awarded in 1975)	No (he won it in 1974)
1977	Robert A Cocks	No
1978	M F Fairfield / S Kempson / Stephen F Leafe	Yes (Stephen F Leafe)
1979	Daryl B Upsall / David P Moon	Yes (David P Moon)
1980	Michael J Godfrey	Yes
1981	J S Squires	Yes
1982	Philip J Bullen	Yes
1983	Kevin J Ashton	Yes
1984	A R Dodsworth	Yes
1985	Duncan E Walker	Yes
1986	M R Pitcher	No
1987	Lee Burman	No
1988	R T Kilcoyne	Yes
1989	Richard G Tooley	Yes
...
1992	J M Oliver	Yes
...
2003	Patrick Turner	Yes
2004	Samuel Steer	Yes
...
2006	James Watson	Yes
2007	David Walder	Yes
2008	Waleed Butt	Yes
2009	Timothy Worrall	Yes
...
2012	Bhagya Raj	Yes
2013	Lawrence Hamshaw	Yes
2014	Alice Stacey	Yes
...
2015	Nicholas Doddrell	Yes
2016	Mihir Rao	Yes
2017	Matthew Wearden	Yes
2018	Neelay Sant	Yes
2019	Seth Greeves	Yes
...
2021	Matthew Dickens	Yes
2022	Kishore Murugesh	Yes
2023	Suwaid Sheikh	Yes
2024	Akshaj Airon	Yes
2025	Lochana Rathanayake	Yes

Some notes on the award of the Frank Harrison Hill Exhibition

18th October 1978 - assumed to have been written by Arthur Shrimpton. Some of the information above has been derived from the lists included with these notes.

1. Details of recipients have been obtained from the Balance Sheets of the Foundation Governors, and from Speech Day programmes, though many of the awards were not listed in programmes. In the majority of cases payment was made to the recipient during, or just before, his first term at University.
2. In almost every case the recipients were considered to be of sufficient ability to justify their taking Oxbridge Entrance examinations - though not all of them took these examinations - but it would appear that in some cases candidates considered to be in greater financial need were awarded the Exhibition on preference to other candidates with higher academic achievement.
3. On the attached list the date shown in the left-hand column is the end of the academic year; thus, R M Sheehan was awarded the Parry Gold Medal for the academic year 1955-56 and was listed as the Parry medal winner in the programme for the Speech Day held during the Autumn term 1956.
   The figure in brackets after each name in the column headed Frank Harrison Hill shows the end of the financial year during which the award was paid; thus T Grimes was paid during the financial year ending 31-3-61 and both T D Gledhill and D A Hines were paid during the financial year ending 31-3-62.
4. An attempt has been made to relate awards to the Speech Day programme in which they might have appeared. A red asterisk in front of a name shows that the name was actually listed in the programme of the particular year.
5. In the case of Woodthorpe his name was listed correctly in the programme of December 1975, he was paid the award early in the Autumn Term of 1976 and, presumably because of this payment, was listed again in the programme for December 1976. He was not paid twice.
6. So far as is known each individual received £50. The number of awards which could be made in any one year would depend on the balance in the account.
7. A second Parry Prize was first awarded in 1972; this was usually £20. Recipients are shown in brackets under the column headed Parry Medal.
8. A letter from Mr O R Giles, dated 1-6-78, gives information concering some recent payments from the Frank Harrison Hill account together with the dates of certainminutes of Foundation Governors' meetings recording some earlier nominations for the award. Some of the names taken from the Summary of Accounts are not mentioned in Mr Giles' letter (those shown by *) but it would have been easy to overlook some of the minutes.
9. Though J H Wilford was listed in the Speech Day programme of 1971 his name is not mentioned either in Mr Giles' letter or in the Summary of Accounts.

External links

• Frank Harrison Hill - Wikipedia

See Also

• Timeline of Prizes