A Story To Remember

Although I had heard of Octavia Hill before, I hadn’t ever thought of reading her work. An old friend, James Lloyd who works at the National Trust, shared these wonderful eight pages of Octavia’s writing that have re-awakened the historian in me.

Her writing is passionate, methodical and entirely convincing. She take a map of London – sticks a pin in it at Charing Cross and makes a circle of a 4-mile radius around it, then divides the circle into four quadrants, and then analyses how much green space there is. This map from 1888 shows London a widely unequal society, where the West has access to many parks and green public spaces, while East London has precious little.

Read it – and next time you go to Parliament Hill and Clissold Park, you’ll know who you have to thank for it!