OCTAVIA HILL

Octavia Hill (1838-1912) was a woman ahead of her time. An artist and a radical, she was a pioneer of affordable housing and can be seen as the founder of modern social work. Her formidable achievements as an environmental and open space campaigner led to her co-founding the National Trust, which today protects over 300 historic properties and keeps 250,000 hectares of land open to all.   See what life was really like for the poor in the days before sanitary reform!   Her life and work is documented in Octavia Hill’s Birthplace House in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, a handsome Georgian house facing the river Nene. The house and its displays demonstrate this remarkable woman’s influence on our life today: her fight against poverty and disease and her quest to bring peace and beauty into the lives of ordinary working people. On the website link you will see a blue and white plaque. All the buildings where great souls like Charles Dickens and Octavia Hill's lived are marked with one of these plagues. http://www.octaviahill.org/