Hilda Jennings


Hilda Jennings was a British community activist, sociologist, author, and academic. She is best known for her efforts to improve the lives of working-class communities, particularly through her work in the East End of London, at the Bryn Mawr Community, and as Warden of the Barton Hill University Settlement.

Background

Hilda Jennings was born into a Stafford family established in commerce. The family firm, R.T. Jennings & Son of Stafford, dated back to the 19th century and was, at its height, the largest local footwear manufacturer and wholesaler. In 1959, the business was restructured as Jen Shoes Ltd. Her father, Arthur Thomas Jennings JP, was a prominent businessman who owned the company until it was incorporated as a limited company in 1922. He also served as a director of the Stafford Railway Building Society.
The Jennings children enjoyed a comfortable and privileged upbringing, reflective of their family's social standing and commercial success. Both of Hilda's siblings went on to lead successful lives: her brother, Arthur Tildesley Jennings, joined the family business and later became its managing director, while her sister, Nellie Jennings, married Charles Venables, a wealthy industrialist and timber merchant from an industrial Quaker family, similar in status to their own.
Jennings' mother was Anne Madders, who married Arthur Thomas Jennings in 1892. She was from a Staffordshire farming family, then based at Seighford Grange. Her father John Madders later moved to farm at Coppenhall, dying shortly afterwards, where two of Anne's brothers carried on the farm.

Education

Hilda Jennings attended Stafford Girls' High School and won an open scholarship in 1912 to attend St Hilda's Hall, Oxford. From there she went on to study at the London School of Economics, gaining a Master's degree in Social Science. She graduated at Oxford in 1920.

Career

In 1937 Jennings became the warden at University Settlement Barton Hill, Bristol, a position she held for twenty years. She was subsequently its director of research. With her arrival, sporadic social work training at the settlement became well established.
In 1939 Jennings and Winifred Gill were asked by Robert Silvey of BBC Radio's audience research department to do a local survey of working class listening. They found a particular benefit in the regular series of programmes on child care and maternal health pioneered by Margery Wace. After the outbreak of World War II, in December 1939, the BBC moved its continuous survey of listening from London to Bristol, with Silvey's department.
Jennings was known for encouraging people in the Bristol region while the area was being redeveloped in the 1950s and 1960s.
In her 1962 book Societies in the Making, Jennings describes Barton Hill in Bristol and examines how the community decided to rebuild in the same area.

Selected publications

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