Toynbee Hall is the original university settlement house. Founded in 1884 in Commercial Street, Whitechapel in the East End of London, it is still active today. A centre for social reform, Toynbee Hall was founded by Samuel and Henrietta Barnett with support from Balliol and Wadham colleges at Oxford University, and named after their friend and fellow reformer, Oxford historian Arnold Toynbee.

The radical idea behind Toynbee Hall that became the basis for settlement houses throughout England and the United States (Hull House) was that middle-class reformers would go to live in the poor neighbourhoods, providing direct aid—in the words of Samuel Barnett 'to learn as much as to teach; to receive as much to give'.

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Toynbee Hall