Changing Faces of St Marylebone

Octavia Hill is most famous today as one of the founders of the National Trust. But she spent most of her life working to improve the conditions of the poor in London.

She came from a family of social reformers and her father’s bankruptcy put a stop to her education and forced her into work; her first job was making toys for children attending the Ragged Schools. She was then promoted to run the toymaking workroom, which employed children who had left the Ragged Schools. She found the living conditions of her young workers horrifying and vowed to improve them.

The aesthete and philanthropist John Ruskin was an acquaintance of Hill’s and was impressed by her. In1865 he bought three cottages at Paradise Place (now Garbutt Place) in Marylebone and gave them to Hill to manage. She employed only female rent collectors to make it easier for her female tenants to discuss any difficulties, and always maintained that it was important to treat tenants compassionately and as individuals. Paradise Place was a triumph from a financial as well as a social reform perspective and Hill went on to replicate its success across London; by 1874 she was running 15 schemes with 3,000 tenants.

Hill was a passionate believer in the importance of fresh air and open spaces, especially for those in urban areas. She coined the phrase “green belt” to describe the countryside around London that should be protected and helped to save Hampstead Heath from development. Campaigning to save areas of the Lake District led to her founding, with two others, the National Trust in 1893.

Hill left an extraordinary legacy and appears today as a kind of prophet who was able to imagine what future generations would need, and set about creating it with compassion and pragmatism. The present has much to thank her for.