Robert Hunter (National Trust) Robert Hunter (National Trust) Sir Robert Hunter (27 October 1844 – 6 November 1913) was a solicitor, civil servant and co-founder of the National Trust. From the 1860s Hunter was interested in conservation of public open spaces, and worked with other pioneers in this field, including Octavia Hill and Hardwicke Rawnsley. After acting as adviser to Hill in her campaigns to save Hampstead Heath and other open spaces, he worked with Rawnsley to save land in the English Lake District from industrial development. In 1893 the three campaigners agreed to set up a national body to acquire vulnerable properties and
Octavia Hill Hospital in the East End inspired Octavia Hill's concern for the poorest in early Victorian London. She received no formal schooling: her mother educated the family at home. The family settled in a small cottage in Finchley, now a north London suburb, but then a village. Octavia Hill was impressed and moved by Henry Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor", a book that portrayed the daily lives of slum dwellers. She was also strongly influenced by the theologian, Anglican priest and social reformer F. D. Maurice, who was a family friend. She began her work on behalf of London's