Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue

Housing and social reformer; born 3 December 1838 at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. Largely supported by grandfather Thomas Southwood Smith, after father’s bankruptcy and nervous breakdown 1840; moved with mother, writer and educationalist Caroline Southwood Hill (1809–1902), and four sisters to London; through work at Ladies Guild, Holborn brought into contact with Christian Socialist circle and reality of poverty in the area, and met lifelong influence Frederick Denison Maurice 1852 and John Ruskin, who began to train her as a copyist 1855; secretary to women’s classes at Working Men’s College from 1856 and taught at school set up by her mother at their home; investment by Ruskin enabled purchase of lease on Paradise Place (now Garbutt Place), off Marylebone Lane 1864, and her development of successful method for renovating and maintaining housing for the poor, repeated at a number of other sites across central London; wrote her first ‘Letter to Fellow-workers’ 1872, which became a detailed description of her progress, circulated annually amongst supporters; published essays, The Homes of the London Poor (1874); unsuccessful campaign to buy Swiss Cottage Fields 1875 sparked life-long determination to secure public open space; published essays on the theme, Our Common Land (1877); large workload, failure of brief engagement to lawyer and supporter Edward Bond, and unprovoked attack on her in Ruskin’s Fors Clavigera likely precipitated breakdown in health 1877; recovered abroad with companion Harriot Yorke and resumed work relating to housing and campaign for open spaces 1880; took possession of cottage in Crockham Hill, Kent 1884, designed by architect Elijah Hoole, who also helped Hill design Red Cross Cottages and adjacent hall (with murals by Walter Crane), Southwark (built 1888); founder member of National Trust 1895; died 13 August 1912, after long battle with lung cancer.

Henrietta Barnett on Hill’s appearance:

She was small in stature with a long body and short legs. She did not dress, she only wore clothes, which were unnecessarily unbecoming: she had soft and abundant hair and regular features, but the beauty of her face lay in her brown and very luminous eyes, which quite unconsciously she lifted upwards as she spoke on any matter for which she cared. Her mouth was large and mobile but not improved by laughter. Indeed, Miss Octavia was nicest when she was made passionate by her earnestness. [1]

On her character, Barnett is keen to observe this correction:

When I read obituary notices of her, crediting her with the commonplace virtues of kindness and unselfishness … it annoyed me because those were not her virtues, and enumerating them gave the wrong impression of her character. She was strong-willed – some thought self-willed – but the strong will was never used for self. She was impatient in little things. Persistent with long-suffering in big ones; often dictatorial in manner but humble to self-effacement before those she loved or admired. [2]

Elizabeth Heath

Referencesback to top

Barnett 1918
Barnett, H., Canon Barnett: His Life, Work and Friends, 2 vols, London, 1918.

Bell 1942
Bell, E.M., Octavia Hill, London, 1942.

Carr-Gomm 1996
Carr-Gomm, R., Octavia Hill & The Individual, Wisbech, Cambs., 1996.

Chase 1929
Chase, E., Tenant Friends in Old Deptford, London, 1929.

Clayton 1993
Clayton, P., Octavia Hill, Wisbech, Cambs., 1993.

Darley 1990
Darley, G., Octavia Hill, London, 1990 (reissued 2010).

Darley 2004
Darley, G., ‘Hill, Octavia (1838–1912)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; online ed., May 2012.

Downes 1926
Downes, W.H., John S. Sargent: His Life and Work, London, 1926.

Guy 1994
Guy, J.R., Compassion and the Art of the Possible, Wisbech, Cambs., 1994.

Heffer 2013
Heffer, S., High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain, London 2013.


Higham 1947
F. Higham, Frederick Denison Maurice, London, 1947.

Hill 1933
Hill, O., Extracts from Octavia Hill’s “Letters to Fellow-Workers,” 1864 to 1911. Compiled by her niece Elinor Southwood Ouvry, London, 1933.

Hill 1956
Hill, W.T., Octavia Hill, Pioneer of the National Trust and Housing Reformer, London, 1956.

Jones 2012
Jones, S., ed., The Enduring Relevance of Octavia Hill, London, 2012.

Kilmurray & Ormond 2004
Kilmurray, E., and Ormond, R., ‘Sargent, John Singer (1856–1925)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; online ed., Jan. 2010.

Maurice 1913
Maurice, C.E, ed., Life of Octavia Hill as Told in Her Letters, London, 1913.

Mitchell 2004
Michell, R., ‘Barrington [née Wilson], Emilie Isabel (1841–1933)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004.

Oldfield 2008
Oldfield, S., Jeanie, an ‘army of one’: Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the first woman in Whitehall, Brighton, 2008.

Ormond & Kilmurray 2002
Ormond, R., and E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Portraits of the 1890s, New Haven and London, 2002.

Simon 1996
Simon, J., The Art of the Picture Frame: Artists, Patrons and the Framing of Portraits in Britain, exh. cat., NPG, London, 1996.

Tabor 1927
Tabor, M.E., Pioneer Women. Second series: Hannah More, Mary Carpenter, Octavia Hill, Agnes Jones, London and New York, 1927.

Upcott 1970
Upcott, J., ‘Octavia Never Looked Sideways’, National Trust Newsletter, 1970, p.6.

Waterson 1994
Waterson, M., The National Trust: The First Hundred Years, London, 1994.

Watts 1974
Watts, A.S., ‘Octavia Hill and the Influence of Dickens’, History Today, vol.24, May 1974, pp.348–52.

Westwater 1984
Westwater, M., The Wilson Sisters: A Biographical Study of Upper Middle-class Victorian Life, Athens, OH, 1984.

Whelan et al. 2005
Whelan et al., eds., Octavia Hill’s Letters to Fellow Workers, 1872–1911, London, 2005.

Yeldham 1997
Yeldham, C., Margaret Gillies RWS, Unitarian Painter of Mind and Emotion (1803–1887), Lampeter, 1997.