HILL-WOOD, Peter Denis (1936-2018)

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Obituary in Daily Telegraph 31 December 2018 - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2018/12/30/peter-hill-wood-former-arsenal-chairman-appointed-arsene-wenger/

He was a scion of the Hill-Wood Baronets (1921) of Moorfield Glossop Derbyshire being the son of Major Denis John Charles Hill Hill-Wood MC (1906-1982), 3rd son of the 1st Baronet, and (m 1932) Mary Cecilia Martin Smith (d 1997)

The obit gives his middle name as Dennis though Denis in Debretts.

Some extracts re family from the obit:-

Peter Hill-Wood, who has died aged 82, was a City banker who followed his father and grandfather as a long-serving chairman of Arsenal football club.

Hill-Wood spent his working life as a director of Hambros Bank, which was his maternal grandmother’s family firm. His paternal forebears prospered in cotton and became prominent in the public and sporting life of their native county of Derbyshire; it was Sir Samuel Hill-Wood, first baronet and MP for High Peak, who bought a shareholding in Arsenal and served two stints as its chairman between 1929 and 1949. Samuel’s son Denis was chairman from 1962 until his death in 1982, when his son Peter succeeded – and held the post for 31 years.

Born in Kensington on February 25 1936, Peter Dennis Hill-Wood descended from John Wood, a Yorkshireman who married a Miss Hill from Liverpool and became the owner of several cotton mills at Glossop in Derbyshire. Peter’s mother Mary, née Smith, was a grand-daughter of Sir Everard Hambro, who was senior partner of the family bank in the late 19th Century.

Grandfather Samuel Hill-Wood was a Tory backbencher who according to Peter “never made a speech in the House of Commons” – and a great sportsman who captained Derbyshire at cricket, played rugby league for the county, sponsored Glossop’s football club, owned Waterloo Cup greyhounds, and kept his own pack of foxhounds. All four of Samuel’s sons played cricket for Derbyshire; Denis, Peter’s father, also turned out for Arsenal’s second eleven.

Peter was educated at Eton and served in the Coldstream Guards before embarking on his City career. He also entered the archives of cricket by playing a single first-class game in 1960 – for the Free Foresters club, scoring 30 runs and taking one wicket in an eight-over bowling spell.

He joined Hambros in 1961, joined the board in 1969, became head of the investment management division in 1973, and was later a vice chairman. He was a director of a number of other companies including Slater Walker Securities during its rescue from collapse in the mid-1970s, and more recently the gold venture Peter Hambro Mining, now Petropavlovsk.

For recreation Hill-Wood played golf at Swinley Forest and Royal St George’s and enjoyed shooting. He married, in 1971, Sally Andrews, who survives him with their daughter and two sons.

Peter Hill-Wood, born February 25 1936, died December 28 2018