Oxford University Association Football Club

Biography

Arnold Frank Hills was born in 1857, the son of successful industrial chemist and entrepreneur Frank Clarke Hills, who in 1871 bought a controlling interest in the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company.

The Hills family, including Frank's four brothers, had diverse other interests in chemical works, engineering and other staples of the post-industrial revolution period. Arnold Hills is most prominently remembered as the founder of the Thames Ironworks Football Club, which would later become West Ham United FC.

Educated at Harrow School before attending University College, Hills had a successful career in contemporary top-level football. Following his two Varsity Blues in the 1870s, Hills went on to play for Old Harrovians and won an England cap, making an appearance for the England side that beat Scotland 5-4 at the Kennington Oval in 1879. He was also the English Mile Champion, one of the country's top sporting accolades at the time.

Hills emerged as a young industrialist during the late Victorian era, which were the halcyon days of the British 'gentlemen-capitalist'. He had a consist interest in the living conditions of the company workforce, and at the age of 23 bought a small property his place of business on the East India Dock Road, in Canning Town. Having joined the Ironworks in 1880, he joined the board 1890s and took over the firm upon his father's death, overseeing its prime years from 1897 to 1902.

From 1895, he published the 'Thames Ironworks Gazette', a publication that was a mixture of corporate propaganda, technical journal, local newspaper, history magazine, and company newsletter. Hills viewed the Gazette as a line of communication between management and workers amid the industrial tension of the period, particularly around the docks. He used the forum to argue for the importance of worker-management cooperation and to gain support for company policies. Hills also introduced practical gains for his workers, such as the first eight-hour day in 1894 and an employee co-ownership scheme, reflecting his belief in the connection between social welfare and the efficiency of his business enterprise, particularly through encouraging worker-loyalty away from the Union movement. Concerns for the welfare of his employees living in the borough of West Ham led Hills to reject the idea of moving his business further up the Thames in what was then considered Essex. He even sanctioned limited Trade Union activity.

The Gazette advertised corporate facilities, in particular the worker clubs he had himself had set up, including cricket, rowing, athletics and cycling. Like all good paternalistic Victorian Capitalists, Hills viewed such activities as promoting therapeutic activities for toiling workers, and encouraged further clubs in science, music and drama designed to augment the soul. This can also be seen in the firm's Temperance Society. The link between the ‘Thames Ironworks Gazette’ and the popularity of these clubs was crucial to their mutual success (and reflected later trends in popular media and sport).

In 1895, the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company was one of Britain's most important shipbuilding yards, employing over seven thousand men. The men of West Ham relied heavily on the Victoria and Albert Docks for employment, with cheap housing built in the densely populated Canning Town, Silverhouse and Custom House areas. Other than in the more comfortable housing areas such as Forest Gate, Upton Park, East Ham, Barking and Ilford, there were few green spaces in West ham so that most young men played football in the spaces between factories. Hills saw this local problem as directly related to local issues such as 'bands of young hooligans' on the streets. He saw the lack of recreational facilities as the greatest deprivation for West Ham residents. Hills was a great supporter of the borough of West Ham acceding to the County of London, since this would bring central subsidies for the local area.

In addition to his support of the temperance movement, another symptom of Hills' almost evangelical crusading character was his support for the vegetarian movement, giving an hour-long talk to the 1895 meeting of the Vegetarian Federal Union.

Given attitudes of the time and his own social disposition, Hills had a tense relationship with one of his clubs, Thames Ironworks Football Club, over the desire for independence and a degree of professionalism for the players and officials. In 1895, the players decided that their governing committee should consist of non-players. Arnold Hills was openly hostile to this direction, extolling the virtues of sporting amateurism. This tension only increased when the players began to recruit top coaches and playing staff as well as entering the FA Cup. This was anathema to Hills, for whom sport was an end in itself and should exhibit Corinthian values. The irony was that, by acting as a wealthy benefactor, Hills gave Thames Ironworks FC an advantage over more established clubs.

Hills was instrumental in establishing the London League, of which he was President in 1896-97. The Chair of Thames Ironworks FC, Francis Payne, was recruited by Hills to establish a ruling structure for the league. Promising early form for the Irons was disrupted when they discovered that they would be evicted from their Hermit Road ground in October 1896. Following four games that had to be played away, Hills found them a new ground at Browning Road, adjacent to East Ham High Street. Much of the subsequent success at the new ground was credited to the generosity of Arnold Hills. In January 1897, he announced at the Thames Ironworks Federated Clubs Annual Festival that he had found a permanent new home ground for the club. The main attraction of the Memorial Ground in Plaistow, so named to commemorate the sixtieth year of Queen Victoria's reign, would be cycling, with football merely its secondary purpose. The site was next to what would from 1901 be West Ham station, not far from Hermit Road and virtually on top of a proposed site for a new stadium for today's West Ham United FC. The stadium was built in just fourteen weeks costing a staggering £20,000 and with room for 100,000 spectators. It contained full facilities for the sporting clubs of the Ironworks, and for Hills represented the realisation of a personal vision. While initial gates were disappointing, the ground was later considered as a possible venue for the FA Cup Final. Ironically, the new ground was a major catalyst for greater professionalism in order to attract larger gates, drifting from Hills' ambitions.

Surprisingly, Hills was at times rather tolerant of the new tide of professionalism in the Thames Ironworks FC, despite it no longer representing his social vision. Following the success of the London League Championship in 1898, professionalism continued to creep-in, for example with injury-insurance. The committee running the club welcomed Hills' continued patronage, but desired self-sufficiency as soon as possible. The Irons' original kit was based on the colours of Harrow school, which were a mid to dark blue. In their first full season at the Memorial Ground, they sported a new kit of Royal Blue and white, with a red cap and stockings. This seemed to typify the Club’s movement away from Hills and his founding principles. At the end of the 1897-98 Season, Hills reluctantly agreed, following protracted debate, to the request of the club's committee to more openly embrace professionalism.

Around this time, Thames Ironworks had built its first ship for the Royal Navy - The Albion - at the beginning of what would become the European naval race.

The project was high profile for Hills, but was beset by delays due to an engineering union strike and staff shortages. The ship was light since government contractors had failed to supply the correct level of armour plating. Still, The Albion was the first ship to be launched from the Ironworks by Royal hand, with the future King George V and Queen Mary titling the vessel in front of around 30,000 onlookers. Arnold Hills greeted the royal party and other dignitaries with a lunch. The launching of the ship was a personal triumph for Hills, and was his opportunity to complete the transition from privileged Victorian business-class to British ruling class. Tragically, the launching of the ship shattered one of the bridges that spectators had crammed onto to watch the event, killing 38 people. Hills had tried to turn a high profile event into a celebration for his workers, but the overcrowding that followed resulted in calamity. Hills was overcome with grief. In the weeks that followed, he visited bereaved families and promised to pay funeral expenses for the poor. He was touched by the refusal of families to blame the company and himself, almost certainly feeling a level of personal guilt. He purchased a large plot in East London Cemetery, marked by two engraved tablet that can still be seen today. Hills bore permanent scars from the tragedy, a symptom of which was a far more permissive role in the organisation of the Thames Ironworks FC.

The following year, the Irons entered the Southern League and would play against established clubs such as Fulham and Watford. Disappointing crowds at the Memorial Ground were frustrating the Committee. Transport links were poor, and there was little taste for professional football in the area. The committee did not want to keep relying on Hills' handouts. In this season, many of the twenty-seven new players were professional, despite the retained official links with the Ironworks. Players increasingly came from outside the local area as the Irons began to seek greater success, winning another Championship and promotion in the Southern League Second Division. Hills was a vociferous opponent of ‘Spectatorism’ and associated activities such as gambling. His views were shared by other paternalistic middle class institutions committed to increasing sporting facilities for the young poor, such as London Playing Fields' Committee and Toynbee Hall. Watching football with little physical engagement was viewed upon disdainfully by the Victorian middle class; it did not matter to Hills that the Memorial Ground had never been half full. The trends for 'Spectatorism’ had been set by nearby Upton Park FC, but even they were an Old Boys club committed to ‘improving working class life’. The contradictions involved can be seen by Upton Park FC welcoming large attendances at its home in West Ham Park. It is arguable that the commitment to Corinthian principles of sport can explain that club’s demise. The base of operations for Hills' business and philanthropic enterprises in Canning Town was not at the heart of footballing culture in East London and South Essex, compared with Forest Gate, East Ham and Upton Park. Teams in these areas were drawing good crowds from the early 1890s. When the Ironworks became West Ham, the Memorial Ground still failed to attract significant numbers.

In the final months of the nineteenth century, there renewed tensions over professionalism between the club and Hills, after the latter published a critical article in the Gazette. Hills' fears gained some credibility when a scandal engulfed Thames Ironworks FC. Francis Payne was suspended when it was revealed that he had misused up to £1000 that had been given to the club by Hills. The benefactor was said to be embarrassed at the affair, and considered it a symptom of creeping professionalism. Despite this, the Irons continued to attract talented players with generous wages, although form on the pitch in 1900 was indifferent.

Hills' opposition to 'Spectatorism' is difficult to reconcile with the construction of a large stadium, the Memorial Ground. Rather than push the club away, he might have seen his community based aims as complementary to the establishment of a community football club (in Canning Town). There was a brewing crisis between Arnold Hills and the Irons' Committee, as the latter sought increasing funds to improve the team which were not forthcoming through gate receipts at the Memorial Ground nor from increased support from Hills himself. An indication of how out of touch Hills had become was his attempt at a compromise arrangement whereby there would be paid professionals who would also do some work for the shipyard. Subsequently, he increasingly came to realise that the direction of football and the club was not compatible with amateurism.

Around this time, the Ironworks bought out John Penn and Sons Ltd and Hills took it public in order to raise new capital, offering to buy one share for every share purchased. This meant that the great capitalist was now accountable to shareholders and could not engage in his philanthropic pursuits, in particular his support for the football club. The Memorial Ground and the club itself were money-losing, and Hills no longer believed that the Irons activities served a purpose for his employees. At the same time, he had an emotional dedication to the club, and would not simply allow the club to be abolished. Hills’ response was to end the Irons ties with the company and recreate the football club as a limited company in which he would be a major shareholder. He would attract further investment from fellow businessmen, and would provide the Memorial Ground rent-free for three years. As innovative as this solution was, it represented an admission of defeat for Hills' Corinthian ideals and a realisation that there was potential profit in investing in professional 'Spectator' sport. The club was dissolved and reformed as West Ham United Football Club, with a new Chairman and Secretary who both had links to the Ironworks. It is thought that the change of the club’s colours to claret and blue was design to represent a fresh start for the club (since Aston Villa had won the Football League’s First Division that year), rather than having any obvious link to Hills. At the moment of West Ham's formation on 5 July 1900, the Ironworks it had left behind now only employed three thousand men, and was suffering thanks to competition from other yards in the North of England. There was a slow decline of the Ironworks as government orders fell, and the offices at Orchard Place were vacated in 1903.

When Hills discovered in 1910 that syndicates on Northern Yards had been formed to suppress production costs and gain new government contracts, he threatened to use Parliamentary contacts to raise questions over why his firm had received only £1m of £67m in MoD contracts. The Navy then commissioned the Ironworks to build its most technically advanced and largest ever Dreadnought war-ship, weighing 22,500 tons. Following an imprudently low bid, the contract was awarded and HMS Thunderer was launched in 1911. The project made a massive loss, and the Ironworks received no new orders so that the firm's debtors forced foreclosure. Given the dependence on orders from the Admiralty and the short-lived nature of the Dreadnought boom, the Thames Ironworks' decline was inevitable. Ironically, if the Ironworks had survived until 1914, where war created the largest ever shipbuilding boom, shipbuilding on the Thames might have survived for another decade.

Over the first decade of the Twentieth Century, Hills' health rapidly deteriorated. By 1910 he attended work in an invalid carriage, and soon became completely paralysed. This did not inhibit his fight to keep the Ironworks afloat. He addressed rallies in Trafalgar Square in support of awarding government naval contracts to London based yards, and through to the end of 1912 preached positively about the firm's prospects. He died in 1921, less than a decase after his firm had gone out of business. A plaque dedicated the memory of Arnold Hills was built at Canning Town Station in 2000.

Whereas his father had been a great innovator, Arnold's public school attitudes meant that his entrepreneurial instincts were constrained by moralising ideas and beliefs. Their combined attempt to build ships on the Thames produced some marvelous feats, not least HMS Thunderer, but was ultimately not sustainable at the heart of a commercial metropolis.

West Ham temporarily moved from Canning Town to East Ham in 1904. The success of this arrangement in spectator terms led to a permanent move in this direction to the Boleyn Ground in Upton Park in 1906. West Ham capitalised on the development of football culture by clubs such as Upton Park FC who failed to make the transition into a professional structure in keeping with trends in the national game, especially outside Southern England. The process by which West Ham, one of Britain’s largest clubs, came out of this is best seen in the tenure of Arnold Hills as founder and paymaster of Thames Ironworks FC. His grandson, Patrick Hills, has a cousin, Charles Warner, who was a director and major shareholder of West Ham United FC until the club was sold in 2006 to Icelandic Investors for £105m.

Adapted by James Doree from 'Founded on Iron - Thames Ironworks and the Origins of West Ham United', by Brian Belton (2003), Tempus Publishing Ltd