Major Jack Montagu Hillyard (2 January 1891 – 16 February 1983) played cricket for Harrow in

Fowler's match Fowler's match is the name given to the two-day Eton v Harrow cricket match held at Lord's on Friday 8 and Saturday 9 July 1910. The match is named after the captain of Eton College, Robert St Leger Fowler, whose outstanding all round batting an ...

in 1910, served in the British Army in the First World War, and became a moderately successful tennis player in the 1920s and 1930s.

Early life

Hillyard was born in

Harpenden Harpenden () is a town and civil parish in the City and District of St Albans in the county of Hertfordshire, England. The population of the built-up area was 30,240 in the 2011 census, whilst the population of the civil parish was 29,448. Har ...

, Hertfordshire, the son of Commander George Whiteside Hillyard and

Blanche Bingley Blanche Bingley Hillyard (née Bingley; 3 November 1863 – 6 August 1946) was an English tennis player. She won six singles Wimbledon championships (1886, 1889, 1894, 1897, 1898, 1900) and was runner up seven times, having also competed in the ...

. His father won an Olympic gold medal for tennis in 1908, and his mother won the women's championship at

Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * ...

six times between 1886 and 1900. His younger sister Marjorie was born in 1896, in the Hillyard's house "The Elms" in Thorpe Satchville, Leicestershire. He attended

Harrow School (The Faithful Dispensation of the Gifts of God) , established = (Royal Charter) , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent schoolBoarding school , religion = Church of E ...

, and played in the

Eton v Harrow The Eton v Harrow cricket match is an annual match between public school rivals Eton College and Harrow School. It is one of the longest-running annual sporting fixtures in the world and is the last annual school cricket match still to be pla ...

cricket match twice. In 1909, he took 3 wickets; the following year, in the famous match that became known as "

", he was Harrow's top scorer, reaching 62 runs in the first innings, and took 5 wickets, but against the odds Harrow lost to Eton. Hillyard served in the

Royal Field Artillery The Royal Field Artillery (RFA) of the British Army provided close artillery support for the infantry. It came into being when created as a distinct arm of the Royal Regiment of Artillery on 1 July 1899, serving alongside the other two arms of t ...

in the First World War, spending four years in France and reaching the rank of major. His father served in the Royal Navy.

Tennis career

He played in the men's singles at

from 1920 to 1930, and 1932 and 1934, reaching the third round in 1920, 1922 and 1923. He lost the final of the

All England Plate The All England Plate, also referred to as the Wimbledon Plate, was a tennis competition held at the Wimbledon Championships The Wimbledon Championships, commonly known simply as Wimbledon, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is ...

in 1924 to Jack Condon, but won the Surrey Grass Court Championships that year. He also won the Romsey Open in 1920, beating B.V Harcourt in the final. Hillyard achieved greater success in the doubles, where he was Riviera double champion with

Erik Worm Erik Jean-Louis Worm (April 26, 1900 – October 17, 1962) or simply Louis was a Danish tennis player. He was a three-time Danish national singles and mixed doubles champion (1922, 1923, 1924) and a two times doubles champion (1922, 1925) Apart f ...

, and won the Monte Carlo Second Meeting in April 1921. He reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon in both men's doubles and the mixed doubles in 1921, playing with

Algernon Kingscote Algernon Robert Fitzhardinge "Algy" Kingscote (3 December 1888 – 21 December 1964) was a British tennis player, who won the Men's Singles event at the Australasian Championships in 1919. Kingscote also competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics in ...

and

Phyllis Satterthwaite Phyllis Helen Satterthwaite (née Carr; 26 January 1886 – 20 January 1962) was a female tennis player from Great Britain who was active from the early 1910s until the late 1930s. Tennis career In 1911, she participated for the first time in t ...

respectively. He repeated the feat in 1923, playing with Gerald Sherwell and Satterthwaite again.

Later life

Hillyard married writer Fabienne d'Avilla in 1945. She was the daughter of French author Léon Brethous-Lafargue and divorced wife of Pedro Frederico Vaz de Carvalhaes. She wrote under the names Francis D'Avilla and Evelyn Fabyan. She did not remarry after they were divorced, and died in 1980. In 1952, he married Mary Penelope Colthurst, daughter of

Sir Richard St John Jefferyes Colthurst, 8th Baronet ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as p ...

. She had divorced first husband, Brigadier Godfrey John Hamilton, in 1942. She inherited

Blarney Castle Blarney Castle ( ga, Caisleán na Blarnan) is a medieval stronghold in Blarney, near Cork, Ireland. Though earlier fortifications were built on the same spot, the current keep was built by the MacCarthy of Muskerry dynasty, a cadet branch of the ...

, and she died 1975. Hillyard died at

, in County Cork, Ireland. He had no children.

References

thepeerage.com

tennisarchives.com

George Hillyard: The man who moved Wimbledon
Bruce Tarran, p.51-54 {{DEFAULTSORT:Hillyard, Jack 1891 births 1983 deaths People educated at Harrow School Royal Field Artillery officers English cricketers English male tennis players People from Harpenden People from the Borough of Melton Tennis people from Leicestershire Cricketers from Leicestershire British male tennis players Tennis people from Hertfordshire British Army personnel of World War I English emigrants to Ireland Military personnel from Leicestershire