Sir Hugh Neill
South Yorkshire industrialist and Master Cutler who served in Burma during the Second World War
SIR HUGH NEILL, who has died aged 96, was a doyen of the Sheffield steel industry as the third-generation chairman of his family’s toolmaking business, and a leader of the civic life of South Yorkshire.
Hugh Neill was chairman from 1963 to 1989 of James Neill & Co, then one of the world’s largest manufacturers of tools for domestic and engineering use. Having grown through acquisitions in the postwar decades and floated on the stock exchange in 1970, the company at its peak made 11,000 products with a workforce of 4,000 – and was a major exporter to Europe and beyond. Famous in earlier days for its “Eclipse” range of hacksaws and razor blades, in 1985 it completed a hard-fought takeover of Spear & Jackson, a maker of hand and garden tools.
But the Spear deal proved a turning point in the company’s fortunes when consumer demand fell away with the onset of the late-1980s recession. Profits plunged and in the company’s centenary year, 1989, James Neill & Co accepted a £78 million takeover bid from a City private equity group, MMG Patricof. Hugh Neill was succeeded in the chair by the financier Ronald Cohen, but remained honorary president. The name of James Neill was later expunged by the new owners, who rebranded the whole group as Spear & Jackson.
James Hugh Neill was born in Sheffield on March 29 1921, into an industrial aristocracy. His greatgrandfather George Neill, originally a draper and tea merchant, came down from Scotland to become chairman of a Sheffield rolling mill and was five times mayor of Rotherham. Hugh’s grandfather James, having first run a vinegar business, started his own steel venture in 1889, developing a specialised form of steel-faced iron known as composite steel, used for cutting tools.
In the next generation, under Hugh’s father Colonel Sir Frederick Neill, the company developed the Eclipse brand and was an important supplier of magnets and other items for military use during the Second World War; Winston Churchill visited the factory in 1941 to salute the efforts of the workforce.
Hugh was educated at Rugby and destined for Cambridge until war intervened. On leaving school he worked briefly in the family’s factory and was commissioned into a West Riding territorial division of the Royal Engineers which his father had commanded. Called up in August 1939, he was in Norway with the North West Expeditionary Force during 1940 and embarked for India in 1942 to be posted to the Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners as adjutant of a training battalion at Kirkee (Khadki).
He went on to command a field company of 20th Indian Division during the advance through Burma from Chindwin to Rangoon, building bridges and repairing railway lines as they went. At a river crossing south of Letpadan in June 1945 a Bailey bridge built by another unit collapsed under the weight of vehicles; Neill arrived on the scene “to find the general marooned on the wrong side. He gave me hell, even though it was nothing to do with us!” Neill’s men immediately built a 120ft “folding boat equipment” bridge alongside, followed by a more substantial structure, and traffic movements resumed three days later. Neill was mentioned in dispatches.
After a stopover in England, Neill was posted to Germany and promoted lieutenant colonel, ending his service as Commander Royal Engineers 15th (Scottish) Division. He was demobbed in May 1946, rejoining James Neill & Co to become director of sales.
Hugh Neill was high sheriff of Hallamshire in 1971, a deputy lieutenant of South Yorkshire from 1974 and Lord Lieutenant from 1985 to 1996; he was honorary colonel of 3rd Bn Yorks Volunteers (later 3rd Bn Duke of Wellington’s) and chairman of the Yorks & Humberside TAVRA. Appointed CBE for services to exports in 1969, he was raised to KCVO at the end of his lieutenancy. He was secretary and later president of the Royal Bombay Sappers & Miners Officers’ Association.
In 1958 he was Master Cutler of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire – the trade guild of Sheffield’s metalworking community – following his father in 1937, his paternal grandfather in 1923 and his maternal grandfather in 1890. He was also president of the city’s chamber of commerce, chairman (for 34 years) of its council for voluntary service and a member of the regional health authority. Nationally, he was a member of the British Overseas Trade Board, president of several industrial and trade federations, and a council member of the CBI.
Neill maintained this demanding multiplicity of commitments by being “fantastically organised”, according to his second wife, with two secretaries fully occupied keeping pace with him. He found time to be president of Lindrick golf club, near his home, and captain of the Royal & Ancient at St Andrews in 1981, as well as pursuing equestrian interests as a council member of the British Horse Society and chairman of its horse trials committee.
He married first, in Bombay in 1943, Jane Shuttleworth, whom he met when she was kennel huntsman of the Poona & Kirkee Hounds. Jane died in 1980 and he married secondly, in 1982, Anne O’leary who survives him with their son, and two daughters of the first marriage.
A third daughter died in infancy.
Sir Hugh Neill, born March 29 1921, died November 5 2017