Women's Pioneer Housing

Last updated

Women's Pioneer Housing is a British housing association founded in 1920, the first dedicated to housing single women. [1]

Contents

History

Women's Pioneer Housing was founded in 1920, to help provide housing for the new generation of single, professional women in London following the First World War.

It was founded by Etheldred Browning a former Irish suffragist who had run the women’s section of the Garden City and Town Planning Association (GCTPA). Other founding members included Geraldine Lennox of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), Lady Rhondda, and Ray Strachey. Sydney Mary Bushell, a member of the executive committee of the GCTPA and hon sec of their women’s section, [2] was also a founder. They incorporated Women's Pioneer Housing as a public utility company on 4 October 1920 ‘to cater for the housing requirements of professional and other women of moderate means who require individual homes at moderate rents’.

They raised money to purchase its first property, 167 Holland Park Avenue, in 1921.

At the society's 1924 dinner, Mrs. C. S. Peel explained that the association "aimed at providing women workers with houses where there would be scope for individual tastes, and where they could live surrounded by their household gods". [3] After weathering some financial problems in the 1920s the association was able to expand in the 1930s. [4] By 1936 they had 36 properties, primarily in west London and one in Brighton, run on a co-operative basis. [5] Investors included Bertha Newcombe. [6]

Skilled women contractors were central to the organisation's development, including the architect Gertrude Leverkus and the first woman chartered accountants, Ethel Watts and Miriam Homersham. Etheldred Browning ran the organisation until her retirement in 1938.

Housing provision

Women's Pioneer Housing is still active as a social housing provider for women, with offices at Wood Lane, White City, west London. The Chief Executive since 2022 is Tracey Downie, former Executive Director of Housing Management at Homes for Haringey. [7]

It is registered as a Co-operative & Community Benefit Society with the Financial Conduct Authority and as a Registered Social Landlord with the Homes and Communities Agency.

It continues to house single women, mostly now nominated by local authorities.

Plans for a new housing development at the organisation's base in Wood Lane were announced in 2019. After public consultation the revised plans were granted planning permission in November 2022. [8] [9] [10]

As of 2019, it was exploring a possible merger with Housing for Women. [11]

The organisation celebrated its centenary in 2020, with an exhibition Pioneering Courage: Housing and the Working Woman1919 – 1939 based on three years of research into their history. [12] [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henrietta Barnett</span> English social reformer, educationist and author

Dame Henrietta Octavia Weston Barnett, DBE was an English social reformer, educationist, and author. She and her husband, Samuel Augustus Barnett, founded the first "University Settlement" at Toynbee Hall in 1884. They also worked to establish the model Hampstead Garden Suburb in the early 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Octavia Hill</span> English social reformer (1838–1912)

Octavia Hill was an English social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born into a family of radical thinkers and reformers with a strong commitment to alleviating poverty, she herself grew up in straitened circumstances owing to the financial failure of her father's businesses. Home educated by her mother, she worked from the age of 14 for the welfare of working people.

The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) is an independent research and campaigning charity founded and based in the United Kingdom. It works to enable homes, places and communities in which everyone can thrive. Through its research, training, events, publications, and campaigns, it works to challenge, inspire and support people to create healthy, sustainable and resilient places that are fair for everyone. It does so informed by the Garden City Principles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Block (Sydney)</span> Social housing in Redfern, Sydney

The Block is a colloquial but universally applied name given to a residential block of social housing in the suburb of Redfern, Sydney, bound by Eveleigh, Caroline, Louis and Vine Streets. Beginning in 1973, houses on this block were purchased over a period of 30 years by the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) for use as a project in Aboriginal-managed housing.

The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in the United Kingdom and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and social connection. Its main object was the establishment of "settlement houses" in poor urban areas, in which volunteer middle-class "settlement workers" would live, hoping to share knowledge and culture with, and alleviate the poverty of, their low-income neighbors. The settlement houses provided services such as daycare, English classes, and healthcare to improve the lives of the poor in these areas. The settlement movement also spawned educational/reform movements. Both in the United Kingdom and the United States, settlement workers worked to develop a unique activist form of sociology known as Settlement Sociology. This science of the social movement is neglected in the history of sociology in favor of a teaching-, theory- and research university–based model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maxwell Fry</span> English architect, writer and painter (1899–1987)

Edwin Maxwell Fry, CBE, RA, FRIBA, FRTPI was an English modernist architect, writer and painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clays Lane Estate</span>

The Clays Lane Estate was a housing estate in Stratford, east London, and the UK’s largest purpose built housing cooperative. It was an experiment in building close-knit communities as a way of helping vulnerable single people. It became the subject of significant controversy when it was demolished to make way for the site of the London 2012 Olympic games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radburn design housing</span> Housing estate planning design

Radburn design housing is a concept for planned housing estates, based upon a design that was originally used in the community of Radburn within Fair Lawn, New Jersey, United States. The design is typified by the backyards of homes facing the street and the fronts of homes facing one another, over common yards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women in architecture</span> Overview of women architects

Women in architecture have been documented for many centuries, as professional practitioners, educators and clients. Since architecture became organized as a profession in 1857, the number of women in architecture has been low. At the end of the 19th century, starting in Finland, certain schools of architecture in Europe began to admit women to their programmes of study. In 1980 M. Rosaria Piomelli, born in Italy, became the first woman to hold a deanship of any school of architecture in the United States, as Dean of the City College of New York School of Architecture. In recent years, women have begun to achieve wider recognition within the profession, however, the percentage receiving awards for their work remains low. As of 2023, 11.5% of Pritzker Prize Laureates have been female.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simmons University</span> Private womens university in Boston, Massachusetts, US

Simmons University is a private university in Boston, Massachusetts. It was established in 1899 by clothing manufacturer John Simmons. In 2018, it reorganized its structure and changed its name to a university. Its undergraduate program is women-focused while its graduate programs are co-educational.

Mary Laird was a founding member and first President of the Glasgow Women's Housing Association, a President of the Partick Branch of the Women's Labour League, associated with the Red Clydeside movement, and supported the Glasgow Rent Strikes of 1915 alongside Mary Barbour, Agnes Dollan, Mary Jeff and Helen Crawfurd. Laird went on to participate in wider social activism for women and children's rights.

Bertha Newcombe was an English artist and suffragist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Congregation</span> Church in Maryland, U.S.

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Congregation is a Unitarian Universalist church located in Bethesda, Maryland. The congregation is active in community service and social justice projects. The church is officially a "Welcoming Congregation" following the guidelines of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which it is a member. Cedar Lane has weekly Sunday services and offers religious education classes for young people during the school year. Cedar Lane changed its name by congregational vote in 2023 from Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church to Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Congregation in an effort to be welcoming and inclusive to all religions.

Matrix Feminist Design Co-Operative was formed in London in 1981. It was one of the first architectural organisations worldwide to bring a feminist approach to architecture and the design of the built environment and to challenge patriarchal spatial systems. Matrix pursued these objectives through built projects, theoretical analysis, commissioned research and publications, including the book Making Space: Women and the Man-made Environment published in 1984. The book explores relationships between gender and architecture, building on the then emerging work from feminist geographers and historians in the UK and USA, including Doreen Massey, Linda McDowell, Susana Torre and Dolores Hayden.

Jose Ospina is an architect, housing development consultant and author.

The Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship (AAF) was a Sydney-based organisation focused on changing the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Board, the wider issues of wage parity and full citizenship for Aboriginal Australians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elouise Edwards</span> British community worker and civil rights activist (1932–2021)

Elouise Edwards was a community activist and civil rights campaigner. She was born in British Guiana and moved to Manchester, England in the 1960s, becoming known for her campaigns to fight racial discrimination and to develop community services in the Moss Side area of Manchester. Her work included housing projects, women's networking groups, medical assistance programs, and the development of art and cultural programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Williams (architect)</span> Welsh architect and social campaigner (1848–1918)

Robert Williams was a Welsh architect and social campaigner. Born in South Wales, he studied architecture in London and established a practice there in 1887. Williams' work showed a Gothic Revival influence and included public and educational buildings in Wales and London including Wheatsheaf Hall and Cowbridge Girls School. From 1914 he practised in Egypt, constructing Cairo's largest shop for the Davies Bryan Company, as well as a number of other commercial and public buildings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sanford Housing Co-operative</span> Housing co-operative in London

Sanford Housing Co-operative or Sanford Co-op is a housing co-operative located in south east London. Currently home to around 120 people, it is the first purpose-built housing co-operative in the United Kingdom and has run without interruption since its opening in 1974.

References

  1. ↑ "Women's Pioneer Housing". Official website.
  2. ↑ "#LSEWomen: Sydney Mary Bushel | LSE History". 30 August 2017. Retrieved 2 December 2022.
  3. ↑ Mullholland, Terri (2016). British Boarding Houses in Interwar Women's Literature: Alternative domestic spaces. Taylor & Francis. p. 12. ISBN   978-1-317-17209-3.
  4. ↑ Brion, Marion (2002). Women in the Housing Service. Routledge. p. 60. ISBN   978-1-134-89359-1.
  5. ↑ "Women's Housing Association". Historic England.
  6. ↑ Crawford, Elizabeth (2003). "Newcombe, Bertha". The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. Routledge. pp. 448–9. ISBN   1-135-43401-8.
  7. ↑ "Our executive team". Women's Pioneer Housing. 10 September 2020. Retrieved 29 December 2022.
  8. ↑ "Partnering Women's Pioneer Housing". Hub Group.
  9. ↑ "Proposals". 227 Wood Lane. Retrieved 29 December 2022.
  10. ↑ Spocchia, Gino (10 November 2022). "AHMM's plans for women-only housing approved on second look". The Architects’ Journal. Archived from the original on 10 November 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  11. ↑ "Joint statement from Housing for Women and Women's Pioneer Housing". Housing for Women.
  12. ↑ "Update on the Heritage Project - April 2020". Women's Pioneer. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  13. ↑ "Our Story". Women's Pioneer. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.