Finchley Youth Hall


Tony and Myrtle's involvement


Early in 2009 while I was adding to our history pages we were reminiscing about the theatre work we did in the 1950s and onwards - how we first started working together and where. Apart from some small things, the biggest project we were involved in at the time (1953) was the finishing and equipping of the stage at Finchley Youth Hall. So we had a look around the internet to see if the place was still actually in existence and found recent street views of it on Google Maps. Carrying out searches on the name and location did not indicate much current activity going on but there were some brief mentions here and there.

Via various LBB reports I found that the place was being administered by the manager for it in the LBB Youth and Connections Service(!),and so wrote to Liz Sacre to see if she could tell us more about the current situation. Liz replied in April with the current situation and promised to keep me in touch with developments. Liz did exactly that by a circulation in October 2012 of news about the FYH future, in particular the stage itself.

We got more news about the charity that had been setup in 1996 and the decision to relaunch it was of great interest to us - Friends of Finchley Youth Theatre. The minutes of that meeting mentioned having a website and when I wrote asking about that the upshot was that they needed someone to help with it. I promptly offered, with the proviso that I couldn't attend any meetings and sent a possible draft for consideration.

So we went on from there and the draft of January 2013 became a fully fledged website online in May 2012. In fact the LBB had asked that the charity changed its name to Friends of Finchley Youth Centre so the launch was at the address of www.fofyc.co.uk

After a few months the LBB changed its mind again and so the website was shifted to www.fofyt.co.uk

In December most of the website has been finalised and from now on it is just a question of adding more archive material and keeping it up to date the the Friends' activities. We are very pleased to have been able to help from a distance! This year of 2013 is not only the 60th anniversary of the stage but our Diamond Wedding anniversary as well!


Tony and Myrtle Batchelor
Vormark, Denmark

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