Miss Cynthia Hill and Edward de Jongh were neighbours in the Athens neighbourhood of Psyphico. Miss Hill’s mother, Thelma was from the Cumberbatch family who came from Constantinople.

 Notes: 1- From the Donald Simpson account of Anglican history of Smyrna we have dates of office of two Cumberbatch Consuls. Robert William Cumberbatch 1864-1876 (died in office) and Henry Alfred Cumberbatch (1896-1908). From the Internet we are aware that the same H.A. Cumberbatch was in office as British Consul in Constantinople in 1913. Also from the Internet we know that Gertrude Bell called on the Cumberbatch Smyrna Consul (therefore Henry Alfred) and his wife in 1907 –
2- From the Athens marriage registers we see that Marie Thelma, daughter of Noel Cumberbatch, merchant, marries in 1924.

Miss Hill has a cousin, Mona Lekki living in Norfolk who is the custodian of the family records. In addition Michael Barker, descendant of the Barkers in Smyrna of the 19th century and in Egypt till the revolution there, and who died in 2001 had constructed an extensive family tree that through marriage included the Cumberbatches. Miss Hill has a copy of this family tree as well as a collection of family papers. However with succeeding generations having large families, tracing of relatives becomes difficult. Miss Hill’s mother had over a hundred cousins over half of which she did not know.

Miss Hill’s father Reginald Hill had his own business based in Athens, named R.J & E.J. Hill & Sons, a firm specialising in insurance and import / export he ran with one of the 6 brothers all born in Greece. Reginald Hill also represented the ‘The Anglo-Greek magnesite company’, which worked the mines of the island of Euboea and the Northern Greek province of Macedonia. The Hill family had no Smyrna or Constantinople connections and Miss Hill’s great grandfather first came in around 1825 when the Ionian islands of Cephalonia (and 6 others) were under British protection (1814-1864) and administered by British high commissioners. The story of the first settlement appears to be accidental, as great-great grandfather, an O’Toole was left by the British navy in Cephalonia, possibly for health reasons, before fighting the battle of the Nile against the French navy (1798). O’Toole’s daughter who is Miss Hill’s great grandmother married a Hill forming the Hill line. The O’Toole line still survives on the island though they have all married Greeks. The family were business orientated and maintained vineyards for wine production for a while. The Hill school in Athens is unconnected to the family and was an institution established by missionary American Quakers, early in the 19th century.

On the Cumberbatch side of her family, Miss Hill knows that of the first Smyrna British Consul, Robert William (1821-1876) married Louisa Hanson, whose family were British and involved with the building of the railways. The second Consul of the family, Henry was born in 1858 and died in 1918 in Beirut. He was one of 12 children of Robert William, though not all the offspring survived till adulthood. He also married a local British lady, Helene Rees and the location of his death could be connected to the fact that the Rees family were important in shipping. Henry had five children and through some of the descendants the Cumberbatch name lives on. The Cumberbatch origin in the Levant is more obscure than the Hill side as it stretches back to the 18th century. However Miss Hill is aware that the first Cumberbatch to be posted by the Consular service was Abraham Carlton Cumberbatch but it seems the first posting was in Imperial Russia. It was Miss Hill’s great-grandfather who was in the Consulate in Constantinople (H.A.), and her grandfather, Arthur Herbert (1860-1921) was employed by the French tobacco monopoly ‘Regie de Tabacs’ in Istanbul. He married a Marian Tristram and it was their daughter, Thelma who left the city in the turmoil of 1922 as British occupation of the city was ending, and went to Athens where she met Miss Hill’s father.

 Notes: 1- Henry Alfred Cumberbatch (British consul in Smyrna 1896-1908) is mentioned in the memoirs of the famous English traveller and writer Gertrude Bell, whose relevant section mentioning her being hosted by him and his wife in 1907 on her expedition to a Hittite monument in the hinterland of Anatolia, is on line here.
2- Abraham Carlton Cumberbatch’s posting may have been at the time when like in the Ottoman lands, the British consular appointments to Russia were controlled by the British merchant monopoly company, in this case the Muscovy company (est. 1555), and has left a vague legacy in the capital city, with a motley crowd of local residents, recently discovering their ‘Scottish’ heritage and organising yearly festivals.

Miss Hill retains few contacts with the descendants of the Smyrna émigré community in Athens, one of those is a grandson of the Warren family who now lives in Canada.

One of the oldest British families who still live on the island of Evia (Euboea) is the Noel-Baker family (formerly the Bakers), whose settlement goes back to the Ottoman rule of the islands. They are related to the Byron family and still retain the writing desk of Lord Byron.

 Note: Lord Byron died not too far away in 1824 at Missolonghi on the island of Cephalonia, suffering fever and exposure while engaged in the Greek struggle of independence. It was only 145 years after his death in 1969, a memorial to Byron was finally placed on the floor of Westminster Abbey whose authorities had refused to allow a burial there.

Philip Noel-Baker was an MP for the city of Derby constituency during the Second World War and many years after, and the son Francis’s wife has recently written a book on the family history. This book written in English has been reviewed by the Anglo-Hellenic league.

 Note: From the Internet we can access the obituary of Philip J. Noel-Baker, M.P. He was elected to Parliament for the Labour Party in 1929 and remarkably re-elected until 1970, when he retired from politics. He became a minister in the Foreign Office in Clement Attlee's post-World War II government, was named Secretary for Air in 1946, Commonwealth Secretary in 1947-1950 and Minister of Fuel and Power in 1950-1951. In addition he was the 1959 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for being a life long ardent worker for international peace and cooperation. Born Philip Baker, (1889-1982), he added Noel to his name when he married Irene Noel in 1915. She died in 1956.

Also from the Internet we learn, ‘Virginia [Woolf in 1906 – the eminent writer 1882-1941] and her party made a detour from the usual tourist route to visit the island of Evvoia (Euboea), where the Noel family had, since 1832, owned an estate called Achmetaga, at modern Prokopion’, taken from travel notes.

Yet another Internet site, notes that Francis Noel-Baker was a regular broadcaster from the Free Greek radio in Egypt to occupied Greece during WWII, who later became a Labour member of Parliament in the British House of Commons, like his father... Francis speaks fluent Greek, and his mother was related to Lord Byron. More info from the estate site:

From family tales recollected Miss Hill is aware of waves of British venturers who came to the then commercially rather uninviting land of Greece, but through tenacity against overwhelming odds some made it to success.


Unfortunately Mrs Hill has passed away in 2008 in Athens, may she rest in peace.