In 2017, as Women’s Pioneer Housing approached its centenary year, its staff were thrilled to discover a treasure trove of minute books and records from the organisation’s earliest years. In 2018, even more documents – including Gertrude Leverkus’s blueprints for the conversion of WPH properties – were found in the safe, hidden away in a battered old trunk. These discoveries drove the development of Pioneering Courage: Housing and the Working Woman, 1919 – 1939, which marks WPH’s centenary and celebrates its fundamental role in women’s housing and feminist history.   

An early pilot project set out the scope of the project, and brought on board a number of volunteers from the University of the Third Age. In 2017, WPH was granted an award by the National Lottery Heritage Fund; this meant that the organisation could realise its plan to uncover the fascinating history of its founding and its pioneering founders.

For me there were amazing and strangely emotional moments when I started looking through the original documents – firstly opening a list of shareholders where the first name was that of Lady Astor, and then seeing the actual signatures of my heroines like Ray Strachey in the minute book. It was not just realising how well-connected Women’s Pioneer Housing were, but also my having physical contact with the books in which they had written 

Jennifer Taylor, project volunteer

Since then, a core team of volunteer researchers have worked tirelessly to reveal the story of WPH and its early tenants. Researchers, residents, and staff came together to develop the project’s first major public achievement, a short film on WPH’s history (available to view *here*). It launched in March 2019, and formed part of the Royal Holloway College’s Citizens online lifelong learning course.

 Although the Coronavirus pandemic impacted on initial plans for the centenary, WPH has continued to move forward with its celebrations, thanks to the hard work of its staff and volunteers. An online exhibition allows visitors to find out more about the determined, trailblazing women who founded WPH, as well as its remarkable group of early tenants. 

Researching the lives of the tenants has been fascinating, and addictive. Amazing, independent women who did extraordinary things and had been almost forgotten, until now.

Ann Sainsbury, project volunteer

The National Lottery Heritage Fund grant also ensured that WPH’s archive has been secured for posterity. The trove of documents, dating from 1920 to 2020 (and property deeds going back to the nineteenth century), is now kept at the London Metropolitan Archives, and has been digitised for easy access by future researchers. This means that WPH’s key role in the history of women and social housing can finally be fully acknowledged and understood.

One of the reasons I volunteered for this project was because my aunt had been a WPH tenant for 53 years, up to 2010. Identifying WPH’s inter-war tenants, some of whom my aunt would have known, was compulsive detective work for me, often leading to a great sense of achievement when a particularly elusive tenant was finally identified. In-depth research into their lives was absorbing and fascinating, and I felt a real personal link with some of these women from another era’ 

Anne Sharpley, project volunteer