Few women have had a more distinguished career in the cause of women than Mrs. Oliver Strachey, who, among other things, was Honorary Parliamentary Secretary to the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, from 1916 to 1922, and Chairman of the Women's Service War Workers' Bureau from 1914 to 1918. She has been Chairman of the Joint Committee on Women in Civil Service since 1919 and of the Cambridge University Women's Appointments Board since 1930, and Organising Secretary to the Women's Employment Federation since 1934. She is author of 'The Cause - a history of the Women's Movement in Great Britain'.
As if to show what women can do, she is now building her own house, brick by brick, herself, in a wood near the village of Fernhurst, overlooking the Sussex Weald. It is to be a small cottage, built of white Midhurst bricks - two living-rooms, four small bedrooms. The construction has reached the ceiling of the first floor.
But. Mrs. Strachey has already finished a cottage of her own building-a red brick bungalow with a thatched roof - in the same part of the country. It has been occupied for four years.
So women - and men too - who have ambitions to build their own houses should listen to this practical talk today.