5616 x 3744 px | 47,5 x 31,7 cm | 18,7 x 12,5 inches | 300dpi
Date de la prise de vue:
30 décembre 2014
Lieu:
Hilly Fields Park, Lewisham, London.
Informations supplémentaires:
Octavia Hill (1838-1912) is remembered, chiefly, for her innovations in housing and for her championship and organizing around the need for public open space (and her involvement in the establishment of the National Trust). She was committed to working directly with those in need both as an educator and worker. Like many of her generation of social reformers and social innovators Octavia Hill was strongly opposed to any large scale intervention by the state (national or local) in welfare. Yet, ironically, a significant portion of her legacy lies in the development and management of housing by British local authorities during the inter-war years. In this article we provide a brief biographical overview and then examine her contribution as a social reformer and educator in the fields of housing and the provision and enjoyment of open space. Sir Arthur Arnold, chairman of the LCC, which had spent £4, 685 on laying out the grounds, opened the park to the public on 16th May 1896. Sir Robert Hunter, in his capacity as chairman of the committee set up to save Hilly Fields, attended the opening ceremony and paid tribute to Octavia Hill’s hard work. ‘So well-known to many of them by reason of her public- spirited labours, in the course of her work in Deptford’. The Dedication To the Public of Hilly Fields, Brockley, by Sir Arthur Arnold, Chairman of the Council, took place on Saturday, 16th May, 1896. (document will be uploaded in the near future). The summit of Hilly Fields stands 175 feet above sea level, and the park commands very good views. A local man remembering the park in its early days wrote, “Here promenaded all the smart folk of Brockley and Lewisham and to go home from church without crossing the breezy hill to see the sights and get an appetite for the Sunday joint was quite unheard of!” The red brick building in the park was the West Kent Grammar School, built in about 1885, which later became part of Brockley County School., Now Prendergast.
