John Hilton

John Hilton held the new post of Director of Antiquities of Cyprus for seventeen months, from 19 October 1934 until he left the island on 6 April 1936¹. He was an architect by training, and his appointment was terminated a few months after the Department he had founded began work.

Hilton (1908-1994) read mathematics and then philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, took a first and held the John Locke Scholarship in Mental Philosophy, and went on to train at the Bartlett School of Architecture. In 1931 he won a prize for measured drawings of a Byzantine church in the Pindus. John Beazley, Isaiah Berlin, Bernard Ashmole and A. J. B. Wace supported him, and his brother was the painter Roger Hilton¹.

Choosing the first Director

The Archaeological Joint Committee had proposed a Department of Antiquities on 16 November 1932, and in spring 1934 Sir Charles Peers and Sir George Hill of the British Museum visited the island. Hill ran the search and drew up a list of seven names headed by Hilary Waddington. Doubts from Jerusalem about Waddington's character and managerial ability led the selection board to take the second name, Hilton, and to offer him the post on 9 August 1934 at 600 pounds a year. Hilton had written to W. H. Buckler on Wace's advice, and Beazley recommended him independently.¹.

He was appointed on probation for three years. He reached Nicosia on 9 November 1934 by way of Rhodes, where he disliked the Italian restoration practice¹.

The Department of Antiquities

The Department came into existence on 1 January 1935, although the Antiquities Law was not signed until 31 December 1935. It combined the Cyprus Museum with the post of Curator of Ancient Monuments. George Jeffery, the Curator, retired and stayed on as honorary adviser. Hilton began with no office, clerk or typewriter¹.

His staff included Porphyrios Dikaios as Curator of the Cyprus Museum, Joan du Plat Taylor as Honorary Assistant Curator, five museum assistants appointed from 1 January 1935, and Rupert Gunnis as Inspector of Antiquities at 150 pounds a year. J. E. Bowler, an Office of Works foreman, arrived about three weeks after Hilton; Theophilus Mogabgab was seconded as Antiquities Officer for Famagusta; and Monica Bardswell took on the conservation of mural paintings in 1936¹.

Monuments took most of his effort, Famagusta above all. Viscount Mersey's Cyprus Committee gave 1,200 pounds for the town in 1935. By the end of his time Hilton reckoned that half of the most urgent interventions on monuments had been done. He scheduled monuments and wrote a restoration proposal for Kyrenia castle¹.

He controlled illicit digging and encouraged licensed work, among it Bert Hodge Hill's project at Curium. Dikaios's final report on Khirokitia thanks "J. R. Hilton, Director of Antiquities 1934-6, for valuable support"^1,2.

Dismissal

By May 1935 Hilton knew that Gunnis was working against him¹. On 2 August 1935 Acting Governor W. D. Battershill summoned him to Troodos and told him that his appointment was terminated for "a lack of administrative capacity and capacity for going about and seeing people"¹. Hilton sent a Memorial to the Secretary of State on 26 September. The reply of 6 December said he was "not, and not likely to become, qualified for the efficient performance of the administrative duties", but allowed his departure to be put back to the end of March 1936¹.

Nicholas Stanley-Price, writing from Hilton's diaries and papers, concludes that Gunnis's moves against Hilton and Governor Richmond Palmer's zeal for purging civil servants brought the dismissal about. Palmer later said that Gunnis was only one of several people Hilton had antagonised, and A. H. S. Megaw said that Gunnis recommended against renewing Hilton's appointment¹.

Stanley-Price also states that Gunnis made amateur excavations and built up a collection that he exported illegally, selling part of it at Sotheby's on 12 December 1933 and part to Sir Henry Wellcome. Gunnis reported to Hilton in principle until February 1936. According to Stanley-Price, Hilton recorded these infringements only in a confidential letter to the Colonial Secretary shortly before he left¹. No court examined the allegations.

After Cyprus

Dikaios was Acting Director from 1 April 1936 until Megaw arrived on 18 July. Hilton enlisted in the Royal Engineers and was then recruited by the Foreign Office for intelligence work¹. He had published a foreword to the Department's annual report for 1934⁴, an article on the repair of ancient monuments⁵ and, in 1938, a piece in The Listener titled "Cyprus. Island of legends"⁶. His memoir of his time in Cyprus remains unpublished and is held at the Liddell Hart Centre, King's College London¹. He died in 1994¹.