IMG 6138-001-Toynbee Studios

In December 1935 a grant of £10,000 was announced that enabled J. J. Mallon, Warden of Toynbee Hall, to launch an appeal that resulted in the bulky New Building, usually known as Toynbee Theatre, on the site of the old St Jude’s National Schools. Designed by Alister MacDonald, the son of the former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, it was built in 1937-8 by Griggs & Son Ltd, builders of Victoria Street.

It was a functional Modernist building, four and five storeys high, steel- framed with white-tile and beige brick facings but no street frontage, tucked as it was behind St George’s House, Gunthorpe Street. Staircase towers at the west corners lit by vertical strip-glazing served four floors of corridors and offices surrounding the two main rooms: a theatre (the first youth theatre in London) to seat 400, with a stage 19 ft deep and a proscenium opening 28 ft 6 in wide. Above the theatre was a music room, used in the daytime as a juvenile court room, on the second floor were classrooms, a laboratory and two art studios, and on the top floor a dining room and recreation room separated by removable partitions. A light steel framework was built over the roof enclosing it as an area for sports and play.