Obituary: Barnham furniture maker Jack Hill

A Barnham man who spread his love of rural crafts and furniture-making around the world has died.

The funeral of Jack Hill is taking place at 10am today at Chichester Crematorium.

Mr Hill, 76, was an outgoing country person who made learning about making chairs simple for his students.

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He was regarded as making teaching easy because he had so much knowledge about creating furniture from wood.

Jack was born in Leigh, Lancashire, in April 1933. He was apprenticed as a coachbuilder.

National Service in the RAF and the Royal Navy gave him the appetite for travel and adventure. This led him to join two Antarctic survey teams in 1956/7 and 1961-3.

His successful lectures about his experiences prompted him to train as a teacher at Manchester University.

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His interests in the natural world led him into rural crafts and teaching furniture-making at the university until he retired in the 1980s.

He moved to Elm Grove in Barnham to continue his teaching.

Jack taught Windsor chairmaking at West Dean College and also ran several international chairmaking courses in the USA, Ireland, Finland and Newfoundland.

This knowledge enabled him to write 14 books on furniture making.

For many years, he also wrote a monthly column '“ Jack Hill's Country Diary '“ in an international woodworking magazine.

His later life saw Jack develop Parkinson's disease.

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The last few years saw him teach chairmaking and woodcarving at Bognor Regis Community College's adult education courses.

He stopped teaching in 2007, but still attended most classes as a visitor until the end of last term.

He fell in July and was admitted to St Richard's Hospital at Chichester for treatment to a fractured femur.

He was moved to Bognor Regis War Memorial Hospital where he died in his sleep on August 8.

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