On the 30th anniversary of the death of Formula One champion Graham Hill, some of those who were at the scene of the accident in Arkley talk to reporter TOMMY NORTON


Thirty years ago this week, motor-racing legend Graham Hill was killed, along with five members of his Formula One team, when his plane crashed in dense fog in Arkley.

Hill was on his way to Elstree Aerodrome from Marseilles on November 29, 1975, when his twin-engined Piper Aztec clipped some trees and came down on the golf course in Rowley Green Road.

Hendon Times Group photographer Rod Brewster was one of the first on the scene, along with reporter Alison Appleton and group editor Dennis Signy, a childhood friend of Hill's.

Speaking this week, Mr Brewster said: "It was a very foggy night. I could hardly see the hand in front of my face.

"His plane had caught the top of trees and ploughed into another tree and caught fire.

"The scene was very eerie when we got there, lit up by the ambulance lights. You couldn't recognise the plane any more."

Police and ambulance services were on the scene within minutes but there was very little that could be done. Hill, 46, who was the pilot, and all five passengers were killed instantly.

PC George Porter, who was called from Potters Bar Police station to the site of the crash, recalled what happened when he arrived.

"I walked down the fairway of the first hole and saw flames in the distance," he said. "I found the remains of the plane in flames, with the bodies.

"The few minutes I was there on my own, in the middle of the wood on a frosty November night, were very eerie. It was not a pretty sight."

John Hardie, president of Arkley Golf Club, was in the club bar that fateful night. "It was a horrendous evening," he said.

"We were at the bar when we felt the shockwaves through the roof. A policeman arrived and said he had reason to believe a plane had crashed.

"We set off in thick fog and I found him Hill. The plane had come to stop under a tree trunk by the fourth green. We didn't know initially who was in it. It was burnt out, there was nothing to see."

Mr Signy said this week: "I grew up with Graham Hill and his brother Brian. We used to play in the streets of Hendon. He lived in Vaughan Avenue and I lived in Talbot Crescent, but we were only a few houses apart.

"I knew him well through his career and interviewed him when he was a big, big star and was with him at the end I was first on the scene, with another Times reporter, when his plane crashed.

"Obviously, we were devastated because I knew his mum and I knew the family, and realised the implications of it. It was terribly tragic. He was really larger than life, and so was his funeral."

More than 3,000 people attended the funeral at St Albans Abbey and Graham Hill's final resting place is in St Botolphs graveyard, in Shenleybury.

Hill was Formula One world champion in 1962 and 1968 and retired in May 1975. He had just set up his own Formula One team, Embassy Hill, at the time of his death.

Hill left a wife, Bette, and three children, Brigitte, Samantha and Damon, who followed his father into motor racing and was Formula One world champion in 1996.