Housing for women

12 Campion Road was part of a radical experiment between the wars to help single working women find accommodation in London.

WWI was a catalyst for women entering the workforce, but far from liberating them many women were expected to stop war once the soldiers returned home. Salaries for women were much lower than for men and trade unions at the time actively encouraged lower wages for women.

Low pay and a ban on single women being given social housing by some councils meant hundreds of thousands of female teachers and civil servants found it very difficult to find a home.

In response a group of Anglo-Irish feminists established Women’s Pioneer Housing in 1920. The organisation continues to run over 100 years later.

This house was purchased for WPH in 1934. At the time big houses were cheap. In the interwar years no-one wanted to go into domestic labour, and middle class home owners did not want to clean their own homes. This house was therefore turned into eight flats that the new occupants could decorate to their own taste.

The women often found the rents high and used friendship networks to find other single women to share their homes with. Bonds were close. One former WPH resident left all of her estate to her flatmate upon her death.