Elizabeth Hilliard

Doris Elizabeth Bunbury, psychiatrist and conservationist: born Hong Kong 19 October 1903; married 1936 Dr Leslie Hilliard (died 1997); died Bath 10 June 2001.

Elizabeth Hilliard was a psychiatrist who in her retirement, with her husband Leslie, was instrumental in establishing two museums in Bath, the William Herschel Museum and Beckford's Tower.

She was born in Hong Kong in 1903, the only child of missionary parents. Her father, the Rev George Bunbury, was principal of a seminary for the training of Christian priests; and her mother, Alice Clayton, had been attached to a missionary organisation in Fukien Province before her marriage. One of Elizabeth's earliest memories was of being woken by her father and carried to the window to see the Navy "dressed overall" in the harbour for the King's birthday.

When she was six the family returned to England, first settling at Thame in Oxfordshire and then to a series of livings where her father was appointed. The change in climate particularly affected her: the agony of her (untreated) chilblains at her grim boarding school in Ealing in London remained an acute memory. Such pains, however (added to the fact that she was the youngest pupil and therefore subject to bullying by the older girls), only helped to strengthen her powers of endurance and develop her character along determined lines.

She showed precocious aptitude in all her studies, particularly music; but all along she had firmly fixed in her mind that she would become a doctor. In 1921 she began her training at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School as one of the women students inevitably nicknamed the "Royal Freaks". Once qualified, she decided to specialise in the field of mental illness, and went out on a two-year scholarship to work at the hospital in Denver, Colorado, on psychotic and neurotic cases.

Some of the inmates there were men suffering from the advanced stages of syphilis, which had resulted from a lack of proper medical treatment during their wartime service. Twenty years later, in England, Elizabeth Hilliard would try to rehabilitate patients who had been damaged in yet another war: torpedoed merchant seamen, and survivors from the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.

In between the wars her career mainly took shape at the Maudsley Hospital, where she met Leslie Hilliard, who was also engaged in psychiatric medicine. After their marriage in 1936 they were to be allowed a span of 60 years together, enjoying a most harmonious pursuit of joint interests in both work and leisure.

At the beginning of the Second World War the Maudsley was closed, for fear of bombing. Part of it was evacuated to Sutton Training Centre, in Surrey, where Elizabeth helped to organise Sutton Emergency Hospital. It was expected that they would have to deal with the casualties resulting from an invasion; but in the event they received those wounded from the fighting abroad, as well as sailors rescued from drowning, and casualties from the air-raids.

Once the war was over the Hilliards became active members of the Socialist Medical Association, from whose efforts the National Health Service was eventually to emerge.

In the 1950s they decided to give up their busy professional careers, and to move from London to Bath. Here they appeared as committed and productive as ever. At their various homes ­ first in Royal Crescent, then at Batheaston House, and finally at Whyke House ­ Elizabeth used her encyclopaedic knowledge of plants and her talent for landscaping to develop some beautiful gardens. She also employed her considerable powers of organisation in helping institutions like the Holburne Museum, the former Sydney Hotel, housing the collection of the 19th-century connoisseur Sir William Holburne. The museum, founded in 1916, was badly in need of funds and volunteer support. Elizabeth Hilliard was for several years a most dedicated Secretary of the Friends of the Holburne, responsible for initiating the series of lunchtime lectures that has flourished so well since.

The fostering of museums in Bath became a primary concern for both the Hilliards. Together they would buy a property and begin the task of installing a relevant collection within it; and Elizabeth would make a particular point of creating an appropriate garden round it. This was the genesis of the Herschel Museum at 19 New King Street, the sometime residence of the astronomer Sir William Herschel. The William Herschel Society was formed in 1978 and the museum opened in 1981.

Another notable success was their acquisition of the semi- ruinous Lansdown Tower, where they set about repairing the fabric and making a small museum to tell the story of the life and achievements of the writer and collector William Beckford, its original builder. The Beckford Tower Trust was created in 1977, extensive restoration has since been undertaken with the help of the Landmark Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the first floor is now a museum under the administration of the Bath Preservation Trust.

The 120ft tower, erected in 1827, had special associations for Elizabeth Hilliard, since her father had loved the panoramic views from the summit of Lansdown: a tablet outside the entrance to the tower records the initial work of restoration undertaken by Elizabeth and Leslie, in memory of her father. His ashes had been scattered on the hillside below the tower. After Leslie's death in 1997, his ashes too were scattered there, and so, she has instructed, will be Elizabeth's.

Philippa Bishop