Sutton House, Hackney and Octavia Hill

I’m having a very enjoyable two days at Sutton House in Hackney, which is hosting a conference dedicated to exploring the life and times of Octavia Hill. Hill died one hundred years ago this year, and the conference is a chance to reflect on her many achievements, which include being one of the founders of the National Trust.

Sutton House, Hackney

Sutton House is an excellent venue for it too. This 16^th-century house was built by RalphSadleir, an associate of Thomas Cromwell who is well known to us today thanks to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. The House is one of the oldest buildings still standing in this corner of Hackney, and one of the few National Trust places in East London.

Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust gave us a hugely entertaining account of her own involvement at Sutton House. She had been a member of the Trust’s regional committee back in the mid-1980s, long before she took up her role at the helm of the organisation (which was 12 years ago).

In the 80s, a battle raged over Sutton House when the sitting tenants (Clive Jenkins’ trade union the ASTMS) suddenly moved out. Left with an empty building, the Trust proposed to develop it as private apartments. Meanwhile a local activist group set about to ensure that the place was preserved as a museum and community resource.

The conflict made the pages of the Guardian (thanks to Patrick Wright, who writes about it in A Journey Through Ruins), and was resolved in favour of re-opening the house as a educational and community resource. It became a venue for music, drama, art exhibitions, dance and much else once it opened in 1994.

Breakers Yard: site of a new community garden space adjacent to Sutton House

This would surely have been Octavia Hill’s preference too. Although she devoted a large part of her life to housing, her world view, as we have been hearing, was much more holistic. Shelter and food alone were not enough, as people also needed the life-enhancing experiences derived from access to art and nature. Not for nothing did she write about the need to bring ‘colour, space and music’ to the people.

The papers from the conference have been varied – addressing topics as diverse as Octavia Hill’s work for her sister’s Kyrle Society, her portraiture, her involvement at RedCross Garden, her writings on open spaces and landscape, and her relationship with Ruskin and art. 

But some clear themes are emerging too: her determination to act, and with urgency, rather than simply analyse or theorise; her embracing of such a wide range of issues and concerns, all linked by a unifying world view; her deep spiritual feeling and Christian Socialism; her energy and skill at building networks and achieving political influence.

By the end of her life, though, her views were increasingly outmoded. She was not a socialist as such, despite her associations with Morris and also with figures like GeorgeLansbury, future leader of the Labour Party. Lansbury served with her on the Royal Commission on the Poor Law 1905-1909, although the two of them were on different sides when the commission concluded by publishing two different reports, one calling for reform of the poor law system, the other its complete replacement with a new system of state welfare. 

Lansbury went on to become first commissioner of works in Ramsay Macdonald’s Government of 1929-31, where he surprised many civil servants by revealing a great personal passion for the historic buildings, monuments and parks in his care. (Lansburys Lido, for example, was his radical reinterpretation of how the Serpentine in Hyde Park should be re-used.) In 1936 Lansbury, by then a vice-president of the National Trust was one of the supporters of the acquisition of Sutton House by the Trust.

To have had such a radical figure as Lansbury so closely involved in the work of the National Trust in the 1920s and 30s still comes as a surprise to some. The Octavia Hill conference is reminding us, however, of the Trust’s quite radical roots. 

Chris Cleeve from Sutton House leads a tour, watched over by Robert Whelan from Civitas and Gillian Darley, Octavia Hill's biographer