 Dennis Bill 2023

I was born in a nursing home in Portsmouth but have spent all my life in Portchester, a large suburban village on the northern shore of Portsmouth Harbour. Other than a short spell in HM Dockyard, Portsmouth, immediately after leaving school, my 39½ years working life was spent with Ordnance Survey, Britain’s National Mapping Agency, in Southampton. I have been researching my family history since taking early retirement in 2001 and have been an active member of the Hampshire Genealogical Society Fareham Group for over 18 years. My research into two ancestors of my first cousins who were Royal Marines and subsequent research into The Crinoline Church led me to spend many hours in the Royal Marines Museum at Eastney, Portsmouth. As a result I became a volunteer there and for seven years I was digitising and cataloguing the photo album collection until 2019 when the Museum closed and archiving work moved into Portsmouth Historic Dockyard under the umbrella of the National Museum of the Royal Navy. COVID-19 then interrupted things and catalogueing work has only re-started earlier this year (2023) and is now focussed on the many thousands of documents that lie un-catalogued in the RM Museum collection. I’m now doing two days a week there as I have recently taken on another project - to catalogue the seven large albums of art and other material created by Colonel Cyril Field, Royal Marine Light Infantry, between 1879 and his death in 1942.

“...I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles - but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to this Fragment of Life.” Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768 Author of Tristram Shandy

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