Marx Memorial Library

ISLINGTON

TQ3182SE CLERKENWELL GREEN 635-1/74/281 (North West side) 29/09/72 No.37A Marx Memorial Library (Formerly Listed as: CLERKENWELL GREEN (North West side) Nos.37,37A & 38 (Consecutive))

GV II

Library. Built as the Welsh Charity School in 1737-8 to the designs of James Steere; the front elevation rebuilt in 1968-9 in sympathy with the original design under the supervision of A.A.Stewart; a circular plaque in the pediment records the dates 1737 and 1969. Brick covered with stucco, roof of Welsh slate. Two storeys over basement, five-window range and double-fronted, the three middle bays projecting slightly under a pediment and flanked by rusticated quoins which also flank the facade as a whole. Central flat-arched entrance with moulded stucco architrave and cornice on consoles over; doorcase has cornice and overlight. All windows flat-arched and without architraves except the central first-floor window which has a moulded stucco architrave and keystone; sill band to ground floor and storey band between floors; cornice, blocking course and pediment. End stacks. This building housed the Welsh Charity School (1738-1772), the Northumberland Arms (1738-1838), coffee rooms (1838-1880), the London Patriotic Club, an important radical workmen's club (1872-1892), the Twentieth Century Press, publishers of Socialist literature (1892-1922), and the Marx Memorial Library from 1933. Lenin edited Iskra here from 1902-1903. INTERIOR: . There are barrel-vaulted tunnels underneath the building and extending well beyond which may have been connected with the C12 nunnery on the site or with the former Sessions House (q.v.). On the first floor, on the party wall to the west, is a mural painting 'The Worker of the Future upsetting the Economic Chaos of the Present' painted c.1935 in buon fresco by Viscount Hastings, a pupil of Diego Rivera. The building is of exceptional importance as the only surviving building in Britain intimately associated with Lenin. (Historians' file, English Heritage London Division; Daily Mirror, 10 October 1935).

Listing NGR: TQ3151482155