At its meeting in March 2025 the Living Archive Milton Keynes Board unanimously agreed to ask Marion Hill whether she would do us the honour of agreeing to become our very first Honorary Life President.
The Board felt that this would be the best way to recognise the enormous contribution (more than 40 years!) that Marion has made to the to the Living Archive as actress, singer, writer, editor, adviser, sub-committee Chair, Living Archive Band coordinator, champion , friend, support and all round enthusiast.
Marion was a newly arrived English teacher at Stantonbury when she got involved in 1977 in the first local musical documentary All Change. She brought her wonderful singing voice to be part of the band.
‘When we did the first All Change I couldn’t believe it. There were people who’d never been on stage before, sort of just finding themselves amongst this community. I thought it was just so welcoming. I loved every minute of it’.
That experience led Marion to be an ever-present member of the band in subsequent documentaries – Your Loving Brother Albert (1980), Days of Pride (1981), The Jovial Priest (1982) Sheltered Lives (1983), Nellie (1984) where she also acted the part of Nellie’s best friend Effie, Worker by Name (1992), the revival of Days of Pride (1994) and Bigger Brighter Better (1996).
One of the other outcomes of the research about Bletchley’s post war development which led to the play, was the production of a book, Bigger Brighter Better, which Marion was responsible for editing. This was her first foray into local history book writing and it attracted other publishers to commission her to write books for them, including Bletchley Park People: Churchill’s ‘geese that never cackled’ and Milton Keynes Through Time.
For the Living Archive her editing and research skills have been called on many times. She edited the Milton Keynes rugby history, Mud, Sweat and the Rule of Law; Where the Lines Meet, the Bletchley railway workers’ stories; The Story so far, the story of the original CMK and Make no Little Plans, a corporate history of David Lock Associates.
For her book, A Century of Campaigning: People’s stories about the Labour Party in Milton Keynes, Marion interviewed key party members and carried out document research. Her research skills were demonstrated in full in the wonderful The Milton Keynes Book of Days of the Great War, a large format book featuring 200 illustrated pages with first-hand accounts from local people; personal letters, photographs, recorded interviews and newspaper articles.
Marion was also responsible for devising the script from the original interviews for Brad Bradstock’s two one man shows – as Hawtin Mundy in the Sony Award winning I’ll Tell You What Happened, and as Tom Worker in Mr Worker’s Walkabout.
In terms of long-term legacy, Marion’s editing of the two Milton Keynes Songbooks will be seen as her greatest contribution to the people of Milton Keynes. Over 100 songs have been written over the years by local musicians for Living Archive projects, particularly the musical documentary plays. The two Milton Keynes Song Books contain scores for 76 of them. Copies have been given to every school in the Milton Keynes Borough and through the Milton Keynes Song Book website, https://www.mksongbook.org a new generation of citizens will be able to discover the remarkable local history that the songs celebrate and perhaps even be inspired to create their own new ones.
For many years Marion has been the key figure in organising the gigs of The Living Archive Band. Their concerts combined the songs, and extracts from the interviews and primary source material that inspired them and they wowed audiences throughout Milton Keynes and beyond. After more than 40 years as a member, Marion gave her final performance as a member of the band on 6th December 2024, as part of the concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of Stantonbury Theatre.
Marion is proud that the British Library requested – and has stored in its Sound Archive – the Living Archive Band’s All That’s Changed Vols 1 and 2; and the LAMK radio ballads The Horse and the Tractor and The Works all of which she was an integral part of.
Marion’s contribution to the Living Archive extended way beyond singing, performing, interviewing, researching, writing and editing. In 2008 when Living Archive was facing a financial crisis that threatened its future, the then Chair Tim Hill (no relation!) set up a small sub-committee to mount a rescue campaign and support Mel Jeavons in her new role as General Manager and he asked Marion to join as an adviser. Marion volunteered to act as secretary to the group and when Tim retired as Chair of LAMK in 2014, Marion took over as chair of the sub-committee, a role she held until February 2021.
So you can see, from all that involvement and commitment, just why the Living Archive Trustees asked Marion if she would honour the organisation by becoming its very first Honorary Life President. Asked why she had stayed involved so long with Living Archive Milton Keynes, Marion commented,
‘ It was really important to us because we were the building generation: we were the ones that were part of the city of Milton Keynes, and it was important to say, ‘Look, we’re not just here now, this is what people were doing years ago and this is the story really of Milton Keynes’. That’s what was important to me.
I feel really lucky to have been around when there was this organisation that was starting up and growing itself. It was brilliant’.
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