Hampstead Garden Suburb

When people asked Henrietta Barnett, the foundress of Hampstead Garden suburb, how the place came into being she generally started by describing the experiences of her early life. She had married Samuel Barnett in 1873, the year he was sent as vicar to St Jude's Whitechapel, an East End parish notorious for its overcrowding, sweated labour and poverty. As one attempt at redeeming the area he had established Toynbee Hall, the pioneer example of a settlement where young university graduates could live among and get to know the poor, offering their leadership in exchange for a better awareness between the classes. But however well-intentioned this experiment may have been it could never really hope to cement the gap between outsiders, many of whom had to make a special trip to be there, and the local population. How much better, thought Mrs Barnett, if a completely new community could be built where 'all classes would live together under right conditions of beauty and space'.