ABSTRACT
During the middle period of the century there came into existence a good many institutions which had as their object the improvement of the housing of the poor, and as far as their capacity went much good work was done. If the provision of allotments, clothing clubs and savings clubs were typical nineteenth-century preoccupations, there was one clerical duty that had a far longer past, but which was to make heavy and searching demands on the nineteenth-century clergyman. The schemes of Octavia Hill are closely connected with the charitable activities of the Church of England, but she herself is an example of the way the various streams of intelligent philanthropy tended in the nineteenth century to flow together, for she was the granddaughter of Southwood Smith. Consequently any improvement in the cottages in large areas of the English countryside in mid century must have been extremely limited.
