Background
He was the eldest son of Sir Rowland Hill, 1st baronet, who was also a first cousin of Thomas Hill, of Tern, (today Attingham Park). His mother was Jane, daughter of Sir Brian Broughton, 3rd Baronet, of Broughton, by Elizabeth Delves.
He was the eldest son of Sir Rowland Hill, 1st baronet, who was also a first cousin of Thomas Hill, of Tern, (today Attingham Park). His mother was Jane, daughter of Sir Brian Broughton, 3rd Baronet, of Broughton, by Elizabeth Delves.
Richard Hill was educated at Shrewsbury School, Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford.
The Hills of Hawkstone owed their status and fortune to the "Great Hill", the Honorary Richard Hill (1655-1727), diplomatist and statesman, great-uncle of Sir Richard Hill. He became a writer of religious tracts, a patron of Methodists and tolerant of Dissenters, who supported George Whitfield against John Wesley.
In Parliament he was a supporter of William Pitt the Younger.
Nathaniel Wraxall writes that he was
"one of the most upright, honest and disinterested men who ever sat in Parliament… but his religious cast of character laid him open to … ridicule. His manners were quaint and puritanical, his address shy and embarrassed.
He possessed, however, a most benevolent disposition, together with a great estate, which enabled him to gratify his generous and philanthropic feelings."
He created a garden of epiphany, a landscape that would display God"s majesty in the natural grandeur of Shropshire"s rugged hills: "the smooth lawns gave it beauty. The lake and the ruin made it picturesque.
And the craggy hills singled it out as one of the very few sublime gardens in the country." lieutenant had a 10-mile circuit of novel features, including scenes representing Switzerland and Tahiti.
Its excited visitor was left perched on a ‘Raven’s Shelf’, below which cliffs dropped hundreds of feet. Sir Richard Hill"s estate was large even by the standards of the day, but not without difficulties in its administration. In 1790 his steward, George Downward, was found negligent, but Hill did not discharge him.
Extravagance continued: in 1796 Hill did not flinch from a very expensive parliamentary contest with his Attingham kinsmen, William Hill, and in 1816 the Hawkstone estate was hit hard by the failure of Thomas Eyton, receiver general of Shropshire.
15th Parliament of Great Britain. 16th Parliament of Great Britain. 17th Parliament of Great Britain.
18th Parliament of Great Britain.