PLYMOUTH |
The Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History |
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Ronald Crispin Gill was born in March 1916 in Portland Place, Plymouth. He was educated at Hyde Park School and then at the Corporation Grammar School under Mr Charles W Bracken, who in 1932 published a single-volume history of Plymouth, Stonehouse and Devonport. Upon leaving school at the age of 18, Mr Gill joined the Western Morning News Company as an apprentice staff reporter on both the "Western Morning News" and the "Western Evening Herald". On August 5th 1939 at Greenbank Methodist Chapel he married Miss Mary Beatrice Grylls Foot, the niece of Mr Isaac Foot, the Plymouth solicitor and father of Michael Foot. At the outbreak of the Second World War he volunteered to join the Royal Navy but was rejected because he wore glasses. So instead, he joined the Royal Army Pay Corps, from which he transferred to the Royal Army Service Corps, where he served on the one of their motor launches. In due course he was commissioned and commanded one of the Army's first Fairmile motor launches. He was demobbed in 1946 having reached the rank of Captain. He re-joined the Western Morning News Company as deputy chief sub-editor and a few months later became the chief sub-editor. Mr Gill became assistant editor of the "Western Morning News" in 1950. In 1971, following the death of his wife, he was drawn away from his native City to Burford in Oxfordshire, when he was offered the editorship of "The Countryman", taking that magazine to its highest ever circulation. In 1976 he edited "The Countryman's Britain" to celebrate the magazine's half-century and followed that with "The Countryman's Britain in Pictures". Crispin Gill contributed to the life of Plymouth not only through his journalism but also by his work for the YMCA, scouting, yachting, the Church, the Barbican Association, the Devon History Society, the Old Plymouth Society and the Dartmoor National Park Committee. He wrote several booklets of specialised history and in 1966 produced the first volume of "Plymouth - A New History" for Messrs David & Charles Ltd. It was so detailed that it only covered the period from the Ice Age to the Elizabethans. The second volume, published in 1979, was less detailed and crammed the remainder of Plymouth's history into one volume. His other titles included "Sutton Harbour" and "Plymouth River", both of which are still available in bookshops. He was awarded the OBE when he retired from journalism in 1981 and an honorary doctorate by the University of Plymouth in 1995. Ronald Crispin Gill died on Wednesday November 24th 2004 at the age of 88 and was survived by his third wife and four grandchildren. The funeral took place at St Andrew's Church on December 4th 2004.
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