WORDS BY KATHRYN BLUNDELL
Photograph Getty
There is a noticeboard. Stuck with a riot of children’s drawings, overlaid with adverts for old-folks’ lunches and playgroups, party entertainers and yoga classes. Traces of glitter spot the parquet looring and, on one bare-brick wall, a plaque marks the occasion of the hall’s opening by an obscure royal. As a clock strikes seven, a group of people, young and old, large and small,file in through the studded oak doors, stopping to chat as shoes are kicked into corners and mats rolled out.