The Mercury Theatre, at 2a Ladbroke Road in London’s Notting Hill, was originally built as a school in 1851, that mid century year of British national and imperial pride and optimism, celebrated in Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition. Architect John Tarring (1806–1875) designed the original school for the Congregationalists as well as their adjacent Horbury Chapel (now the Kensington Temple, an Elim Pentecostal church). When the school closed, the building was utilised as a church hall (known as the Horbury Hall); in the 1920s, as the Horbury Rooms, the building was occupied by the Kensington Local Pensions Committee; and subsequently the premises were used by Abrasha Lozoff (1887–1936) as the Russian-Canadian sculptor’s studio. In 1927, Horbury Hall was purchased by Ashley Dukes (1885–1959), the successful playwright, drama critic and impresario, who was an active presence in British theatre for over half a century. Dukes met the Polish dancer Cyvia Myriam Ramberg (1888–1982), who, using the French form of her name, was later known as Marie Rambert, founder of the celebrated Ballet Rambert. Dukes and Rambert were married in 1918. Dukes purchased the Notting Hill site and initiated its conversion from church hall to (eventually) a small theatre which became the home of the Ballet Club later to transmogrify into the Ballet Rambert. Dukes’s improvements to what would become known as the Mercury Theatre included a partition within the principal open space to create a room for dance classes on one side and a small theatre on the other.