Seal of the Universities Settlement in East London, designed by Philip Lyttelton Gell, with card of notes explaining the design to celebrate the opening of Toynbee Hall Toynbee Hall in Spitalfields was set up in 1884 by leading figures of Oxford University as a "settlement " to provide social facilities and activities and act as a centre for social reform in a poor urban area. The seal incorporates the emblems of the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge, students of which lodged at Toynbee Hall to undertake social work. Philip Lyttelton Gell was the first Chairman of Trustees. 1884