page_title: Lydia Cecilia Hill
section_title: Mayfair Court
hierarchical_section_title: Lydia Cecilia Hill / Mayfair Court
caption_attribution_description: English: Numbers 139 and 141, Grand Drive, Herne Bay, Kent, England. These two Art Deco houses were built next to Mayfair Court in 1934-1935 by Lydia Cecilia Hill. She was a favourite of Ibrahim, Sultan of Johore.
context_page_description: Lydia Cecilia Hill, known as Cissie Hill or Cecily Hill, was an English cabaret dancer notable for being a favourite of Ibrahim, Sultan of Johor and for being briefly engaged to him. A new Art Deco house, Mayfair Court, was funded for her in Herne Bay, Kent, by the Sultan. She was killed during World War II in her native Canterbury at the age of 27 in a German airstrike. There is an elaborate, marble monument on her grave in Herne Bay cemetery, Eddington, paid for by the Sultan.
context_section_description: This reinforced concrete Art Deco house has always been painted blue and white; the colour even features on the 1937 plan for an extension. It stands at number two Clifftown Gardens at Westcliff in Herne Bay and was started in 1934 and completed in 1935. Council archives have been lost and the architect is not known. A firm called John Howell & Son was contracted for the extension, greenhouse and air-raid shelter during the 1930s, but it was not John Howell & Son of Hastings; the last partner of that company died in 1903. Although it was funded by the Sultan, Cissie was the executive owner of Mayfair Court and the adjoining two Art Deco houses at 139 and 141 Grand Drive from the beginning. She bought a number of 15-foot-wide plots in Clifftown Gardens and Grand Drive, and built Mayfair Court first. In spite of the cancellation of the engagement in 1938, the Sultan continued to fund Mayfair Court and the associated servants' quarters for her. It has also been suggested that the Sultan (via Cissie) did not build the associated two houses for servants, but built them to claim the land and to prevent unsightly building by neighbours next door.
  Cissie lived in Mayfair Court with her mother Florence from 1935 until her death in 1940, and from 1935 to 1937 her father George Hill lived there too. In 1937 she applied to build steps and a bedroom to a design by John Howell & Son over the garage at the south end of Mayfair Court. It was approved by the Council in September and completed by November 1937. In 1938 she applied to have a small greenhouse designed by the same architect; it was completed by 10 February 1939. At that time, Mayfair Court stood on an L-shaped plot of land; part of it is now built on.  The greenhouse stood on the south-western corner, now occupied by garages. On 22 May 1939 the same architect was employed again to submit an application to build a concrete tube air raid shelter, possibly similar to the Stanton shelter. This was built at the bottom of the garden, parallel with Hampton Pier Avenue.
  The World War II usage of the house is not known, but from 1945 it was occupied by Cissie's mother Florence until her death in 1973. For some of that time, for example in 1959 and 1969, her father George Hill lived there too. The house was unoccupied in 1974 after Florence's death. Cissie's sister and her husband lived at Mayfair Court in 1945, but moved to one of the associated houses in the 1950s (no.141) and to the other in the 1960s (no.139) until the sister left shortly after her husband's death in 1967; she died in 2005.
  The survival of Mayfair Court as an architectural asset to its surroundings, and views thereof, has been fragile.  In 1984 there were two applications to develop its land with the building of two or three more properties, but both were refused by Canterbury City Council.
caption: 139 and 141 Grand Drive
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-TZ9", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.0", "Image DateTime": "2011:03:05 13:19:09", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "206", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2064", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4112", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/80", "EXIF FNumber": "41/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "125", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:03:01 09:32:28", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:03:05 13:19:09", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "43775/11718", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "86/25", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "11", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4000", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3000", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1916", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Bracket", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}