Dennis Bill’s Family History
Dennis Bill 2024
About Me
Dennis Ian BILL
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 20 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 in 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