Hilda Levi

Age UK Herne Bay and Whitstable received a generous legacy from Hilda Levi's estate in May 2025.

Linda Cowdry, Chief Officer at Age UK Herne Bay & Whitstable, said: “Age UK, the national charity, and Age UK Herne Bay & Whitstable are extremely grateful to have received this legacy donation, from Hilda Levi which will help to change older people’s lives – now and in the future. 

“The funds will go towards helping older people in the Herne Bay & Whitstable area by supporting services run by the local charity including its drop-in dementia clinics, befriending and Information & Advice services and its Men’s Shed group. Some of the funds will also help to support Age UK, the national charity’s wider work for older people across the country.

“Age UK National and Age UK Herne Bay & Whitstable will also be working with the executors of Hilda’s estate to arrange for her headstone to be engraved with a suitable inscription. Age UK Herne Bay & Whitstable will also be naming their training room The Hilda Levi Training Room. I believe we could all learn something from Hilda’s sense of community and philanthropic ideals, it seems like a fitting gesture to dedicate the room to her memory.”

The Hilda Levi story Revealed: The tragic and inspiring life story of secret Kent millionaire who fled Nazis, grew up near Maidstone and lived in Whitstable 

Information from an article written by Gerry Warren

The extraordinary life of a secret Kent millionaire has been unearthed following revelations about her amazing generosity which is set to benefit thousands of people across the county.

Hilda Levi, who had a modest 1970s semi-detached home in Whitstable, gifted her considerable wealth to numerous local good causes after she died in 2022 aged 98.

Hilda Levi's former home in Seymour Avenue, Whitstable

Her recently published will revealed she divided her sizeable estate in unequal shares between the Friends of Kent and Canterbury Hospital, Age UK in the hope it would benefit the Whitstable branch, Friends of Whitstable Healthcare and
Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. 

They are delighted but mystified, having had no previous contact or even knowledge of Hilda, who likely inherited a substantial sum from a rich uncle.

Neighbours of her home in Seymour Avenue said there were no clues that she was so well-off, with her house and garden left in a poor state.

But now it has been discovered that Hilda was an orphaned child Jewish refugee who fled to England from Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, where all her family were killed in the Holocaust. She was found a home in Sutton Valence, near Maidstone, where she became part of her adopted family, eventually gaining ‘naturalised’ status in 1958.

Hilda Levi pictured in the Kent Messenger in 1963

Now it is known that Ellen Jeffery - who is buried in the same plot as Hilda in Whitstable cemetery, albeit 22 years earlier - is her ‘adopted’ mum who cared for her. But Hilda’s name has not yet been inscribed on the headstone.

Ellen, who died in 1980, was a resident of the former Ladesfield Old Persons Home in Vulcan Close, Whitstable. But her burial record states that her home address was in Seymour Avenue, the house owned by Hilda, who also rented a flat in
London.

Working with genealogist Julie Hunt from Whitstable, we have now been able to piece together the life of a woman who overcame tragedy and adversity.

“I was just intrigued and thought there must be much more to this extraordinary woman,” said Mrs Hunt, who worked in youth services in Canterbury for more than 20 years.

For the past seven years she has become fascinated by genealogy, compiling family trees for families and friends. Trawling through numerous historic documents, Mrs Hunt was able to uncover many more details about Hilda’s life
story. This includes an internee record from May 1941 which confirms Hilda, then aged 16, was a “genuine refugee from Nazi Oppression”.

Mrs Hunt discovered Hilda attended the former Red Hill School in East Sutton Hill, where Mrs Jeffery was a teacher, before studying at Maidstone Secretarial College and later Bromley Technical College.

It was there she received a distinction in business studies in the finals of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries examinations, which was reported in the Kent Messenger on August 16, 1963, when she was 38.

The report describes Hilda as “a refugee from Cologne who lost her entire family during the persecutions in the last war”. It says she was the daughter of Dr Friedrich Hermann Levi and Mrs Irma Levi. The article adds that she had called
The Radicans in Sutton Valence home for more than 20 years.

Hilda worked as a confidential secretary in Maidstone and later at the Duke Of Edinburgh Awards Office in Westminster. It had previously been unclear how she gained her wealth. However, Mrs Hunt’s research has revealed that Hilda had a
wealthy uncle, called Herman Hecht.

The cutting taken from the Kent Messenger in 1963, featuring Hilda Levi's exam success

He moved from Germany to San Francisco when he was just 16 and made his money as a partner in a large coffee import-export firm. From 1939, he was depositing money from the US for Hilda's parents in Germany. They were still alive
in 1940 but ultimately perished.

Mr Hecht died in 1951 and left more than £1.3 million - which is £34.8 million in today’s money - to his remaining siblings and their family, but also to distant relatives and charities.

As Hilda was his orphaned niece, it is highly likely that she benefited from his generosity.

It is still not known why Hilda spent her final years in a Jewish care home in Prescott, Manchester, where she died.

Her will was written in 1982 and validated at the time through former Whitstable solicitors E A Barton, which later merged with Furley Page in Canterbury. The firm says it was notified of her death in 2022 by a local authority and was subsequently appointed executor to distribute her estate to the benefactors.

Her generosity, however, will prove invaluable to the charities who are set to benefit.