Fairbairn Hall presents… Guided tour by Fairbairn Hall residents

Fairbairn Hall presents…

A guided tour of Fairbairn Hall presented by Fairbairn Hall residents.

This event is part of a month-long open house at Fairbairn Hall for Newham Heritage Month: Places & Spaces and the London Festival of Architecture during which Fairbairn Hall presents… an exhibition about its history displaying photographs, publications, and ephemera curated from the Newham Archives alongside site-specific art works, performances and architectural interventions.

About Fairbairn Hall

Fairbairn Hall is a Grade II Listed Heritage building in Newham. It was founded by the University of Oxford during the Settlement Movement in East London (1886-1986), whereby the privileged built residences in poor neighbourhoods where they lived amongst locals to integrate with them, as a means of service and to improve living conditions.

The original Mansfield College University Settlement opened on Barking Road in 1864; by 1900 the architect F W Troup completed Fairbairn Hall, a free neo tudor style red brick building with yellow terracotta roof tiles, for the new Mansfield Settlement on 310 Barking Road.

By the mid 1920s, it was one of the most successful Boys’ Clubs in Europe. The celebrated architect G Grey Wornum (RIBA, Queen Elizabeth Ocean Liner) who went on to be awarded the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, was commissioned to extend, and modernise Fairbairn Hall (1936) with his wife and patron, the artist Miriam Wornum. Fairbairn Hall is the only other living example of his work in London and of the Early Modernism Movement with a (nearly) preserved interior. The extension to Fairbairn Hall and the Mansfield College Settlement included a residence on Avenons Road, a chapel, canteen, gymnasium, Choral Hall, a theatre, and an art deco stairwell with Wornum’s signature iron balustrades.

Fairbairn Hall flourished as a University Settlement for decades, housing sports teams, debating clubs, poor man’s lawyers’ groups and acted as a centre for activity in the community, and a direct line to study at Oxford. In the 1960s, the Warden of the Mansfield Settlement, Sir Ian Horobin, MP, whose knighthood was granted for his service at Fairbairn Hall faced allegations then was sentenced to 4 years in prison for abusing children at the Boy’s Club. He was found guilty but the community lost faith in the Settlement which also lost its funding.

During the 1970s, Fairbairn Hall was all but abandoned, then became home to the infamous Fairbairn Boxing Club. In the 1980s, the historic Boy’s Club was converted into residential units converting its former canteen, Chapel, theatre, library, gymnasium, ping pong rooms into 29 homes in Newham.