please help w/hallmarks

[ErnestBurck]

I'm having some trouble with the maker and year on this.
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[user701]

The maker is Charles Johnston Hill http://www.silvermakersmarks.co.uk/Make ... CR.html#CJ

The date letter L is for 1886

[ErnestBurck]

Oh thank you very much,I have been looking for that information for quite some time.
Any other info or opinions on this item would be much appreciated.

[dognose]

Hi,

Welcome to the Forum.

C.J. Hill was perhaps not the most highly regarded man in the trade. Following his death in 1895, he left the then vast fortune of over £500,000, mostly to his wife and daughter, and also a few bequests to members of his staff. The Watchmaker, Jeweller and Silversmith published a somewhat scathing comment:

"Mr. Hill was a gentleman whom few understood, but a consciousness of the possession of half-a-million is the sort of thing to make a human back a little stiff. It is, however, a pity that the spinal column became so anchylosed that it could not stoop to consider the charities of the trade. The Hills, Williams, and Catchpools take us back a long way in time, and surely the trade upon which they existed ought to have been considered in the redistribution of the immense amount which Mr.C.J. Hill had got together. But perhaps when we see how he has dealt with his own sons we need not be surprised at his neglect of the charities altogether. We know there have been incidents in his life with which the trade has had no sympathy."

Trev.