A New Life Former pilot Jeremy Hill runs a farm in Wexford and is involved in the arts, writes Sylvia Thompson
Hours before the first evening of Blackstairs Opera's production of Puccini's La Bohème by Opera A La Carte last month, Jeremy Hill was sweeping up in the marquee at Borris House, Borris, Co Carlow, where the Opera in the Gardens season would be held.
He had the look neither of the Wexford farmer he is now, nor of the Aer Lingus pilot he was for 32 years previously.
An affable man in his 60s, Jeremy Hill tells his life story with an equanimity that belies any sense of struggle he may have had with his various career choices.
The eldest son of a Waterford GP, he was educated at Headford school in Co Meath and later in England before going to Trinity College Dublin to study natural sciences.
"That's what we were told to do. I failed my first year, but I was gloriously naive in that I always wanted to be a pilot, so I left Trinity. It never entered my head that I wouldn't get into Aer Lingus," he says.
As luck would have it, in the early 1960s Aer Lingus was looking for ab initio pilots. Up to then, former military pilots flew civilian aircraft but, according to Hill, there was a view that "their flying habits were not suitable for civilian flying".
Hill became one of the first airline pilots to be trained by Aer Lingus in Ireland.
Throughout the 1960s, he moved up the ranks of Aer Lingus, from flying F27s (the Dutch two-engine aircraft known as Focher Friendships) to co-piloting 707 jets on the transatlantic route.
"It was a period in aviation which was changing dramatically. The planes were changing from piston-engined aircraft to turbo props to pure jets. No pilots starting a career now would see such radical change in the aircraft they fly. It was very exciting and extremely glamourous. You were king of the world."
In 1970, he married Australian occupational therapist Rosie Stamp, with whom he has had three children, Ben (now 35), Emmy (33) and Tom (31).
He continued to co-pilot the 707 aircraft until 1976, when he was made captain. From 1976 to 1983, he was captain on the Boeing 737. But then, as Aer Lingus faced its first financial difficulties, he availed of two years unpaid leave from 1983 to 1985, during which time the family moved to his wife's home city of Melbourne, Australia.
"Australian life was wonderful. It's such an outgoing place and everybody does things. The beaches and sports facilities are fantastic. I couldn't get a flying job while I was there, so I worked as a courier driver.
"I could have quit and stayed in Australia but I would have been throwing away my pension. Also, my father died during that time and my maternal uncle, John Orpen, left us the farm at Monksgrange, where we now live and work.
"My uncle told us we could sell the farm on the spot if we wished which was very generous-spirited of him. I had spent a lot of my childhood on that farm and I would become the eighth generation of the family to farm it, so there was a great bond with the place."
Home from Australia, the family moved back to Dublin where the children finished their secondary education and Hill returned to Aer Lingus.
They began to spend as much time as possible on the farm in Wexford. The opportunity to leave his job as a pilot arose in 1993, as Aer Lingus faced its second period of financial difficulties and offered redundancy packages to its staff.
"I was 50. It was a voluntary redundancy package. In fact, the government of the time altered the pension rules, so we could take an early pension. I had been considering how I could get more involved in the farm - we had owned it for nine years at that stage."
So all the family moved to the fine three-storey mid-Georgian country home and began to farm full-time.
"We were all country people at heart. We had lived in Glencree, Co Wicklow with a sheep farm of 80 acres of rocky land when we were first married." The move to the country was therefore a relatively smooth one and Jeremy Hill never flew an aircraft again.
"On reflection, I was lucky to leave flying when I did. At the time, I was looking forward to going to farm full-time, but I had never dreamt that I would give up flying. I couldn't have imagined a day I wouldn't fly.
"Flying has changed radically. It's uncomfortable now with lots of delays in the airports and in the air. It's a lot like the roads - it's no longer a nice experience to drive."
By the time the Hills moved to Monksgrange, they had already changed from cattle farming to horse breeding. Hill's late mother, Charmian, was well-known as the owner of one of Ireland's greatest racehorses, Dawn Run, which won both the Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup at Cheltenham.
"My mother had kept horses all her life and I knew a little about racing and breeding from a general interest point of view. I now see that I was naive, but we learnt quickly and have survived the ups and downs of farming."
Alongside this new farming life, Hill also nurtured his lifelong interest in the arts by establishing an art gallery on the farm, the Norman Gallery.
He was also one of the founding members of the Wexford Arts Trail and more recently has become chairman of Blackstairs Opera, which hosts opera in the gardens of country homes in Wexford and Carlow every summer.
As his work in the arts continues to flourish, he says he is about to retire (again) and hand over to his son, Ben, who works full-time on the farm.
"What I want to do is give up everything and do nothing," he says with a laugh.
"Of course I won't do that but what I'd really love to do is to work on stone sculpture. I have done some pieces for my own amusement and I'd love to have gone to art college at the age of 20. Perhaps, in my next life, I'll be a sculptor."