civic, community/cultural
Charles Robert Ashbee, Elijah Hoole, 1884
28 Commercial Street, E1 6LS
The world's founding university settlement. Built to provide educational & social spaces for East Londoners. Neo-Tudor Grade II listed building with notable room decorated by Arts & Crafts designer CR Ashbee. Restoration completed in 2018.
Liverpool Street, Aldgate, Aldgate East
Shoreditch High Street, Liverpool Street, Whitechapel
25, 115, 15, 242, 254
Guided tour
12:00–16:00
Tour of Toynbee Hall and Studios
How to book
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Toynbee Hall was created in 1884 by Samuel Barnett, a Church of England vicar, and his wife Henrietta, in response to a growing realisation that enduring social change would not be achieved through the existing individualised and piecemeal approaches.
The radical vision was to create a place for future leaders to live and work as volunteers in London’s East End, bringing them face to face with poverty, and giving them the opportunity to develop practical solutions that they could take with them into national life. Many of the individuals that came to Toynbee Hall as young men and women – including Clement Attlee and William Beveridge – went on to bring about radical social change and maintain a lifelong connection with Toynbee Hall.
In the 1930s, with funding from actor and director Sir John Gielgud and playwright George Bernard Shaw, Toynbee Studios were added to the Toynbee Hall complex, providing space for art, performance and music, primarily for the use of young people and the local community. Built over four storeys, the modernist building was designed by Alister MacDonald, the son of James Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s first Labour Prime Minister. Toynbee Studios incorporated a 280-seat theatre, which became the first children’s theatre, and the Court Room, which functioned as a juvenile court during the daytime.
Toynbee Hall is a charity that works alongside people facing poverty, injustice, and inequality to build a fairer East London. We provide vital advice and support, working in partnership to tackle unfairness and ensure everyone has an equal chance to thrive.
We work to address poverty and injustice through advice and support and influencing systemic change, shifting power to people and communities affected by injustice and inequality, and collaborating to end poverty and build fairer systems and institutions.
The Barnetts were also hugely passionate about the arts, founding the Whitechapel Gallery and the Guild of Arts and Crafts. Today, the passion for arts remains very much alive at Toynbee Studios, thanks to Artsadmin, a charity that supports contemporary artists to bring their visions to life and highlights connections between the arts and social and environmental justice. Since 1995, Artsadmin have run and developed the studios and the adjoining café space, formerly Henrietta Barnett’s dressing room, as a centre for artistic creation, with workspaces for artists and arts organisations and multiple rehearsal studios for hire.
Guided tour
institution/profession, historical house
A rare opportunity to explore the Georgian headquarters of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), the UK’s oldest building conservation charity, not normally open to the public.
Unknown, 1740
