Hermione Hobhouse, who has died aged 80, made a significant contribution to London, both as a historian of the city’s urban fabric and as a defender of its historic buildings in her roles as secretary of the Victorian Society and general editor of the Survey of London. Her first substantial book was Thomas Cubitt, Master Builder (1971), which examined the life and work of the man responsible for developing much of Camden Town, Islington and Bloomsbury, as well as Osborne House on the Isle of Wight for Queen Victoria, and Edward Blore’s new front of Buckingham Palace. This pioneering study of urban development won Hobhouse the Alice Davis Hitchcock medallion of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.
Daughter of Arthur Hobhouse and his wife, Konradin (nee Huth Jackson), she was born at Hadspen House, in Castle Cary, Somerset, into a family long distinguished for Liberal politics and public service. She was proud of the fact that she was related to Emily Hobhouse, the social reformer who exposed the scandal of British concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer war. Her father played a key role in the establishment of national parks in England and Wales.
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