The building was designed by Elijah Hoole in vicarage-gothic style. It was designated a Grade II listed building in 1973. It was adjacent to the church of St Jude, Whitechapel (demolished in 1927), and was on the site of a disused industrial school. It was built as the first university settlement house of the settlement movement. Students from Oxford and Cambridge University lived there, to undertake social work in the deprived areas of the East End. By 1900 there were over 100 settlements in the United States and across the UK, and in 1911 the leaders of the social settlement movement founded the National Federation of Settlements.
Williams Restoration undertook the restoration of the external masonry and internal plaster works of Toynbee Hall. The works included the removal of gypsum plaster and plaster boards from the internal walls and ceilings and replacing these with oak laths and a pre-mixed Lime plaster in conjunction with horse hair as original. Externally we carried out repointing works, removing cementitious mortar and replacing with a premixed, Lime mortar with a red colouring. Williams also carried out several stone repairs to effected window surrounds. The surrounds had been previously repaired using a cementitious mortar which in turn caused more damage to the original stone underneath. Once we had removed this we used a Lime based, premixed stone repair mortar to restore these as sympathetically as possible.
Project location: Tower Hamlets, London
Client: Thomas Sinden