Octavia Hill

Octavia Hill 3 December 1838 – 13 August 1912 was an English social reformer, whose main concern was a welfare of a inhabitants of cities, particularly London, in thehalf of the nineteenth century. Born into a mark of radical thinkers as well as 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. With no formal schooling, she worked from the age of 14 for the welfare of works people.

Hill was a moving force unhurried the development of social housing, & her early friendship with John Ruskin enabled her to add her theories into practice with the aid of his initial investment. She believed in self-reliance, and provided 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 developing on existing suburban woodlands, and helped to save London's Royal Commission on the Poor Laws in 1905.

Hill's legacy includes the large holdings of the advanced National Trust, several housing projects still run on her lines, a tradition of training for housing managers, and the Octavia Hill Birthplace business determine by the Octavia Hill Society at her birthplace in Wisbech.

Legacy and memorials

When John Singer Sargent's portrait of her was introduced by her fellow-workers in 1898, Hill made a speech in which she said, "When I am gone, I hope my friends will not attempt to carry out all special system, or to follow blindly in the track which I have trodden. New circumstances require various efforts, and this is the 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, aamount 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 throw both."

The Horace Street Trust, founded by Hill, became a good example 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 numerous years. Hill's determination to provide community space can still be seen in the quality of the Red Cross site in Southwark 1888, among others. The Octavia Hill Society website states that with a community hall, and soundly manages appealing houses, Hill here anticipated the necessary ingredients of town planning by some 15 years.

The Settlement movement devloping integrated mixed communities of rich and poor grew directly out of Hill's work. Her colleagues Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, founded Toynbee Hall, the number one university-sponsored settlement, which together with the Women's University Settlement later called the Blackfriars Settlement maintains to serve local communities. Overseas, Hill's name is perpetuated in the Octavia Hill connection in Philadelphia, a small property company founded in 1896 to render affordable housing to low and middle-income city residents.

Women who had trained under Hill formed the joining of Women Housing Workers in 1916. This later changed its name to the Society of Housing frames in 1948. After merging with the Institute of Housing frames in 1965, the society became the present day Chartered Institute of Housing in 1994. The CIH is a fine body for those works in the housing profession in the UK and overseas. The training that Hill gave to Charity Organisation Society volunteers contributed to the development of advanced 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 chrity Family Action.