Octavia Hill (3December 183813August 1912) was an English social reformer and founder of the National Trust. Her main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born into a family of radical thinkers and reformers with a strong commitment to alleviating poverty, she herself grew up in straitened circumstances owing to the financial failure of her father's businesses. Home educated by her mother, she worked from the age of 14 for the welfare of working people.

Hill was a moving force behind the development of social housing, and her early friendship with John Ruskin enabled her to put her theories into practice with the aid of his initial investment. She believed in self-reliance, and made it a key part of her housing system that she and her assistants knew their tenants personally and encouraged them to better themselves. She was opposed to municipal provision of housing, believing it to be bureaucratic and impersonal.

Another of Hill's concerns was the availability of open spaces for poor people. She campaigned against development on existing suburban woodlands, and helped to save London's Hampstead Heath and Parliament Hill Fields from being built on. She was one of the three founders of the National Trust, set up to preserve places of historic interest or natural beauty for the enjoyment of the British public. She was a founder member of the Charity Organisation Society (now the charity Family Action) which organised charitable grants and pioneered a home-visiting service that formed the basis for modern social work. She was a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws in 1905.

Hill's legacy includes the large holdings of the modern National Trust, several housing projects still run on her lines, a tradition of training for housing managers, and the Octavia Hill Birthplace House established by the Octavia Hill Society at her birthplace in Wisbech. She was key in pushing for the creation of what is now known as the Army Cadet Force, after seeing the success it was having in schools who maintained detachments of the Officers' Training Corps (now known as the Combined Cadet Force).

Biography

Early years

Octavia Hill was born on 3 December 1838 in Bank House (now named the Octavia Hill Birthplace House), South Brink, Wisbech, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, the daughter of James Hill, a corn merchant, former banker and follower of Robert Owen, and his third wife, Caroline Southwood Smith. He had been impressed by the writings on education of his future wife, the daughter of Dr Thomas Southwood Smith, a pioneer of sanitary reform. He engaged Caroline as a governess to his children in 1832, and they were married in 1835.

A co-operative guild providing employment for "distressed gentlewomen" accepted Hill for training in glass-painting when she was 13. When the work of the guild was expanded to provide work in toy-making for Ragged school children, she was invited, at the age of 14, to take charge of the workroom. The following year she began working in her spare time from the guild as a copyist for John Ruskin in Dulwich Art Gallery and the National Gallery. She was deeply aware of the dreadful living conditions of the children in her charge at the guild.

Her views on encouraging self-reliance led to her association with the Charity Organisation Society (COS), described by Hill's biographer Gillian Darley as "a contentious body which deplored dependence fostered by kindly but unrigorous philanthropy ... support to the poor had to be carefully targeted and efficiently supervised. Later in life, however, she began to think the COS line ... was over-harsh."

Housing for the poor

thumb|right|alt=Victorian photograph of the exterior of a London slum property|A [[Marylebone slum in the nineteenth century]]

Parliament and many concerned reformers had been attempting to improve the housing of the working classes since the early 1830s. When Hill began her work, the model dwelling movement had been in existence for twenty years, royal and select committees had sat to examine the problems of urban well-being, and the first of many tranches of legislation aimed at improving working class housing had been passed.

John Ruskin, who was interested in the co-operative guild, knew Hill from her work as his copyist and was impressed by her. In 1865, having inherited a substantial sum of money from his father, he acquired for £750 the leases of three cottages of six rooms each in Paradise Place, Marylebone. The municipal authorities quickly surpassed her in the number of properties under their management.

A.S. Wohl notes that in the 1880s Hill had about £70,000 worth of property under her management, and at the end of her career she was managing the dwellings of "perhaps three or four thousand people at the most."

Hill was opposed to other reforms that came about in the early part of the twentieth century. She was against female suffrage on the grounds that "men and women help one another because they are different, have different gifts and different spheres." She also believed that provision of social services and old-age pensions by the government did more harm than good, sapping people's self-reliance.

Legacy and memorials

thumb|right|alt=A memorial blue plaque| Plaque in [[Red Cross Garden, Southwark|Red Cross Garden in South London]]

When John Singer Sargent's portrait of her was presented by her fellow-workers in 1898, Hill made a speech in which she said, "When I am gone, I hope my friends will not try to carry out any special system, or to follow blindly in the track which I have trodden. New circumstances require various efforts, and it is the spirit, not the dead form, that should be perpetuated. We shall leave them a few houses, purified and improved, a few new and better ones built, a certain amount of thoughtful and loving management, a few open spaces..." But, she said, more important would be "the quick eye to see, the true soul to measure, the large hope to grasp the mighty issues of the new and better days to come – greater ideals, greater hope, and patience to realize both."

The Horace Street Trust, founded by Hill, became a model for many subsequent housing associations and developed into the present trust that bears her name, Octavia Housing. Today it owns several of the homes, including Gable Cottages, designed by Elijah Hoole, who worked with Hill for many years. Hill's determination to provide community space can still be seen in the shape of the Red Cross site in Southwark (1888), among others. The Octavia Hill Society website states that with a community hall, and soundly maintained attractive houses, Hill here anticipated the fundamental ingredients of town planning by some 15 years. The training that Hill gave to Charity Organisation Society volunteers contributed to the development of modern social work, and COS continued to be instrumental in developing social work as a profession during the twentieth century. COS is still in operation today as the charity Family Action.

In 1907, Parliament passed the first National Trust Act, enshrining the trust's permanent purpose and giving it powers to protect property for the benefit of the nation. The trust now looks after a wide range of coast, countryside and historic buildings. According to the trust's website, "Staff, volunteers and tenants are engaged daily in providing access to open spaces for people's enjoyment, providing habitats for wildlife and in improving our environment – 'for ever, for everyone'."

A single grave marker for Miranda Hill, Octavia Hill and Harriot Yorke was placed in Holy Trinity churchyard, Crockham Hill, Kent.

Commemorations of Octavia Hill include a monument to her at a Surrey beauty spot, on the summit of a hill called Hydon's Ball. Shortly after her death, the family erected a stone seat there, from which walkers can enjoy views over the Surrey countryside. The National Trust, who now own the site, has set up a commemorative guided walk that passes the seat, and two Octavia Hill Trails in Kent.

The Octavia Hill Society was set up in 1992 "to promote awareness of the ideas and ideals of Octavia Hill, her family, fellow workers and their relevance in today's society nationally and internationally". Under the society's auspices her birthplace at Wisbech has been turned into the Octavia Hill Birthplace House. In 1995, to mark the centenary of the National Trust, a new variety of rose, "Octavia Hill", was named in her honour. A zonal pelargonium 'Octavia Hill' bred in Germany by plant-breeding company Elster PAC Jungpflanzen was launched at the Birthplace House in June 2009.

Octavia is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 13 August.

A housing development in the 1990s by Winchester Housing Group, now part of A2Dominion housing association, was named "Octavia Hill".

In 2012 a memorial plate was unveiled in Westminster Abbey by the then chair of the National Trust, Simon Jenkins. The round stone tablet in the nave, notes her as a "Social reformer and a founder of the National Trust".

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Baigent, Elizabeth, and Ben Cowell. Octavia Hill, social activism and the remaking of British society (University of London Press, 2016). online with open access to all chapters
  • Baigent, Elizabeth, and Ben Cowell (eds., 2016), ‘Nobler imaginings and mightier struggles’: Octavia Hill, Social Activism, and the Remaking of British Society, Institute of Historical Research.
  • Boyd, Nancy (1984). Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill, Florence Nightingale: Three Victorian Women Who Changed Their World. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Darley, Gillian (1990). Octavia Hill: A Life. London: Constable.
  • Darley, Gillian (2004). Octavia Hill: Social Reformer and founder of the National Trust. London: Francis Boutle.
  • Hill, Octavia (1872). Further Account of the Walmer Street Industrial Experiment. London: George Pulman. OCLC 560462399
  • Hill, Octavia (1877). Our Common Land (and other short essays). London: Macmillan. OCLC 156901340
  • Hill, Octavia (1883). Homes of the London Poor. London: Macmillan. OCLC 79061157
  • Hill, Octavia (1884). Colour, Space, and Music for the People. London: Kegan Paul, Trench. OCLC 49912542
  • Hill, Octavia (1909). Memorandum on the Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. London: P.S. King and Son. OCLC 232315440
  • Jeffery, Maud, and Edith Neville (eds, 1921). House Property & its Management. Some papers on the methods of management introduced by Miss Octavia Hill, etc. London: Allen & Unwin. OCLC 27713282
  • Maurice, C. Edmund (ed, 1913). Life of Octavia Hill as told in her letters. London: Macmillan. OCLC 187454788
  • Maurice, Emily Southwood. (ed, 1928) Octavia Hill: Early Ideals. London: Allen and Unwin. OCLC 68245696
  • Moberly Bell, Enid (1942). Octavia Hill: A Biography. London: Constable. OCLC 493117448
  • Morrell, Caroline. "Octavia Hill and women’s networks in housing." Gender, health and welfare (Routledge, 2015) pp. 91–121.
  • Rooff, Madeline (1972) A Hundred Years of Family Welfare: A Study of the Family Welfare Association (Formerly Charity Organisation Society) 1869–1969. London: Michael Joseph.
  • Walker, Stephen P. "Philanthropic women and accounting. Octavia Hill and the exercise of ‘quiet power and sympathy’." Accounting, Business & Financial History 16.2 (2006): 163-194. online
  • Whelan, Robert (ed, 1998). Octavia Hill and The Social Housing Debate: Essays and Letters by Octavia Hill IEA Health and Welfare Unit,
  • Whelan, Robert (ed, 2005). Octavia Hill's Letters to Fellow-Workers 1872–1911: Together with an Account of the Walmer Street Industrial Experiment. London: Kyrle Books.
  • Wyatt, R.J. (2000). Octavia Hill and The Crown Estate – a Continuing Legacy?, The Crown Estate
  • BBC Radio 4 discussion "Octavia Hill" on In Our Time 7 April 2011
  • Website of Octavia Hill Birthplace House in Wisbech