Episode 31. Octavia Hill

SYNOPSIS

Acclaimed within her own lifetime as one of the three most effective Victorian female social reformers (the other two being Josephine Butler and Florence Nightingale) Octavia Hill continues to influence 21st century Britain every time the National Trust purchases a new property for the country. Octavia Hill (1838-1912) co-founded the National Trust with Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley in 1894, but she had been active as a social reformer from adolescence. The granddaughter of the public health reformer, Dr Thomas Southwood Smith and daughter of the educationalist Caroline Hill, Octavia was almost born to undertake some form of social service.

While Octavia was a teenager, the Hill family came under the influence of the Christian Socialist circle made up of the heterodox theologian F. D. Maurice, the country parson, Charles Kingsley, the author of Tom Brown’s School Days, Thomas Hughes, the barrister, John Ludlow, and the social investor, Edward Vansittart Neale. A whole series of experiments in co-operative and educational enterprises ensued. Many eminent people were drawn in and John Ruskin, the art critic and radical prophet was perhaps the most famous. Spotting Octavia’s potential Ruskin employed her as a copyist for his multi-volume Modern Painters. Ruskin also put up the money for the purchase of three slum houses in Paradise Place, Marylebone (known to locals as “little hell”) for Octavia Hill to manage. Possessed of a genius for detailed problem-solving, coupled with public relations skills to rival her mother’s and grandfather’s, she instituted the Octavia Hill Method of housing management, a system which renovated tens of thousands of London homes.

GUEST

The distinguished biographer, speaker and broadcaster, Gillian Darley is ideally placed to provide an introduction to Octavia Hill, having published the definitive biography in 1990 which went into a second edition in 2010, shortly before the centenary of Octavia Hill’s death. The interview follows the invincible progress of Octavia Hill from housing manager to pioneer of a network of fellow workers, including Henrietta Barnett, Emma Cons and Beatrice Webb, to advocate for commons preservation, culminating in the foundation of the National Trust. Simon Machin adds his own insights into the Octavia Hill Method, derived from post-graduate study at the London School of Economics at a time when Professor Anne Power was reviving interest in local housing management, inspired by Octavia Hill’s example.

More information on Gillian Darley’s ‘particular liking for Utopian experiments and unlikely places’ can be found at http://www.gilliandarley.com/

Gillian’s interview with Simon Machin was recorded online on 2 August 2023.