'The main object of the Settlement was to bring a force of educated workers to give help to all the higher interests of the neighbourhood, religious, educational, social, and administrative. Its aims were defined at the outset in the following terms:

1. To bring additional force and attractiveness to Christian work. 2. To become a centre of social life, where all classes may met together on equal terms for healthful intercourse and recreation. 3. To give facilities for the study of Literature, History, Science, and Art. 4. To bring men together to discuss general and special social events and to seek their remedy. 5. To take such part in local administration and philanthropy as may be possible. 6. And so to do all this that it shall be perfectly clear that no mere sectarian advantage is sought, but that it shall be possible for all good men to associate themselves with our work.'

J. Scott Lidgett, Reminiscences (1928) p.29-30

• J. Scott Lidgett, My Guided Life (1936)
• A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, vol. 4, 'Documents and Source Material' (1988) pp.591-3
• J.D. Beasley, The Bitter Cry Heard and Heeded (1989)
• Alan Turberfield, John Scott Lidgett, Archbishop of British Methodism? (Peterborough, 2003) pp. 29-44, 361- 67, 381-83
• Brian Frost, with Stuart Jordan, Pioneers of Social Passion (Peterborough, 2006)
• Nigel A.D. Scotland, Squires in the slums: Settlements and miassions in late-Victorian London (2007)