Octavia Hill

Social housing reformer and founder of the National Trust and the Southwark Cadet Corps.

Octavia Hill was born in 1838 and at the age of 26, and with £3,000 provided by her friend John Ruskin, Ms Hill launched her career as a housing manager. She was particularly interested in creating “well ordered, quiet little homes behind neat little doors” and was completely against dreary tenements.

She helped her poverty-stricken tenants to find jobs in order to pay their rent and encouraged them to save, giving them advice when needed. The Mint was one of the worst areas of the borough and here on a derelict paper factory in Redcross Way she built six gabled cottages around a small garden. The cottages were just one of many projects Octavia took on and in 1895 she co-founded the National Trust.

She went on to persuade the authorities to renovate old tenements and where possible to build picturesque cottages.

In 1889 Octavia Hill founded the Southwark Cadet Corps. Colonel Salmond of the Derbyshire Regiment did the practical work in Southwark, and she even persuaded Viscount Wolseley to preside at the first meeting of the Southwark Corps in 1889. The Corps attracted 160 cadets with many refused and cadet drill was held at Red Cross Hall.

In 1890 the corps band took part in the Lord Mayor's Procession which helped encourage and increase membership. Octavia Hill had problems persuading the war office to pay for brighter uniforms than the dull green that the parent unit wore. Ingenious to the last she wrote to Eton College suggesting a link between their Hackney Wick Mission Corps and that in Southwark. They accepted and helped pay for a smart red uniform which Octavia felt would do much to cheer the dull Southwark streets. Southwark's Local History Library holds two volumes of enrolments for the cadets, for 1892-95 and 1908-14 and also a scrapbook for 1897-99.

Eventually, after tireless work, Octavia retired to her home in Kent and died in 1912.

What our voters think

"Octavia was a radical thinker and more importantly a doer! Her belief in the need to better the lives of those less advantaged is an enduring principle that still inspires many thousands of people today. The project at the Red Cross Cottages is an excellent example of how she worked, sometimes on a very small scale, to make a real difference to people’s lives. At a time when issues of housing quality and access to green space are once again at the forefront of our minds it could not be a more appropriate time to honour her achievement and highlight the issues she cared about." Ian Wilson, London Area Manager, The National Trust

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You can vote for Octavia Hill by email and post using the details below.

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Southwark Council
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