Our background & history

Hornsey Housing Trust owns and manages around 400 properties within the London Borough of Haringey. In 2023 we celebrated our 90th anniversary.

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Margaret Hill CBE

Hornsey Housing Trust was set up in 1933 by Margaret Hill CBE. She was a member of Hornsey Borough Council, and came from a family active in public service – her mother was the first female member of Cambridge Borough Council, and her brother was Maynard Keynes, economist.

The objective of the Trust was to ‘convert houses for the occupation of more than one family’ and to aid ‘old aged pensioners’. Margaret Hill persuaded the Council to lend the Trust up to 85% of the cost of purchasing and rehabilitating houses, at a very low rate of interest – the first borough to use these previously dormant powers. By the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Trust owned and managed 50 houses.

Post-war, the Trust focused on converting and managing the houses it had bought. Margaret Hill remained actively engaged in its work, but also developed an interest in those needing a higher level of care, setting up Hill Homes in Highgate for this purpose.

A significant expansion in the Trust’s work was the development in the 1990s of modern sheltered housing at Abyssinia Court, Margaret Hill House, Olive Tree House, Sheba Court and Palm Tree Court. Today, the Trust owns and manages almost 400 homes, but its close links to the old borough of Hornsey remain: most of its properties are in the N8 postal district, and all are within Haringey.

In 2023 Hornsey Housing Trust celebrated its 90th Anniversary - tenants, staff and local dignatories attended a tree-planting in Priory Park in Crouch End and later in the year a celebration was held at the Trust's scheme at Margaret Hill House. The event also marked the publication of the book, 'A Place to Call Home: the first 90 years of Hornsey Housing Trust', written by former Trust Chair Rosie Boughton. This book is available to buy at some local bookshops, or it can be ordered online here from the All Good Bookshop. An extract from the book was read out in Parliament by Catherine West, MP for Hornsey & Wood Green.