Settling the East End

The contrast could hardly be more stark; Oxford’s dreaming spires compared with the broken buildings of London’s urban poor; squalid and cramped East End squares as the antithesis of Cambridge’s bucolic meadows and the proud, monumental quadrangles of England’s great public schools opposed to crumbling Whitechapel tenements.

In Victorian England, the East End of London was for many as unknown, alien and frightening as the unexplored lands being explored on different continents. If Britain could send missionaries to convert the natives of those uncharted lands overseas, could they not also bring Christian hope and salvation to the darkest corners of England?

This was the motivation behind the Mission Settlements and the curious connections between some of London’s poorest areas and its most privileged educational establishments.

Oxford University focused on the East End – Bethnal Green had Oxford House and Spitafields was home to Toynbee Hall. Cambridge University looked south of the river to found Cambridge House and Talbot House on the Camberwell Road.

The missionary work was not the preserve of the ancient universities. Up to 24 public schools also established formal links with deprived areas. The Harrow Club was established in west London’s Notting Dale, the Uppingham Mission found its home in North Woolwich whilst the Eton Mission would put down roots in Hackney Wick. They were joined by the Charterhouse Mission in Southwark and the Winchester College Mission in the East End.

William Booth had already identified ‘Darkest England’ and prescribed a cure through the missionary work of the Salvation Army

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