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The theatre school’s current home. |
Sylvia Young Theatre School to stage an exit
FOR 25 years the hallowed corridors of the Sylvia Young Theatre School have reverberated with the sounds of fame-hungry students who dream of one day seeing their names up in lights.
Tucked away in an imposing stone building behind Marylebone Station, the school has been a passport to the top for the likes of Amy Winehouse, Billie Piper and Denise van Outen.
But proposals lodged with Westminster Council this week reveal it is planning to sell-up to developers and leave behind the former church school it has called home since 1983.
Sylvia Young, the school’s owner who was recently awarded an OBE, is requesting planning permission for nine flats on the site in Rossmore Road – a potential gold mine for the school which has outgrown its current premises.
It’s the end of an era, but the school’s 160-odd pupils won’t be moving far, having struck a deal with an unorthodox American church less than a mile away off the Edgware Road.
If planning chiefs give the project approval, the school will lease the 11th Church of Christ Scientist in Nutford Place, enabling them to meet the demand for places which has rocketed over the past 10 years, making Sylvia Young more competitive than winning a place at Oxford. The search for a new home has taken almost two years and the church will easily provide the 16,000 square feet that Mrs Young requires.
She is remaining tight-lipped on the plans although she confirmed they were looking to move.
Mrs Young said: “I don’t want to say too much because it could jeopardise the move but we are looking to obtain ?planning permission as a kind of insurance policy to make the building more desirable.
“We are hopeful it will remain as a school and have heard that this might happen. We haven’t got enough room and we want to stay in Marylebone. Hopefully this will happen.”
Former students have famously bemoaned the four flights of stairs they had to climb every day in the Victorian building.
Mrs Young is seeking planning permission to use the church as a school, with the addition of a caretaker’s flat.
Since moving from its original home in Drury Lane 25 years ago, the £9,000-a-year private school for 10 to 16-year-olds has become something of an institution in Marylebone.
John Falding, former chairman of the Marylebone Association, said it would be sorely missed.
“The school has been a marvellous institution and we are proud to have it in Marylebone,” he said.
“It’s good that it’s staying in the area. My only worry would be the impact of these flats.
“I know the school gave a certain amount of vibrancy to the area and I fear a loss of character. I hope it just doesn’t become yet another soulless enclave.”
Built in the 1920s, the huge 11th Church of Christ Scientist is one of three London branches of the Christian Science group, an American church that many see as a cult because of believers’ hostility to medicine and belief in faith healing.
The church itself refused to comment on the proposals, although one member of the congregation said numbers had been dwindling. |
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