A Marylebone office building that served as a secret Second World War training centre for spies preparing to be dropped into Nazi occupied France has been sold for around £3 million.
The Grade II listed Georgian property at 1 Dorset Square was known as “Spy Corner” during the conflict and became a symbol of Anglo-French co-operation and friendship. For the past 36 years it has been used as a French language centre run by the Alliance Francaise de Londres.
However, the centre has struggled in recent years, particularly since Brexit when it became much harder to recruit teachers from France, and the decision was taken to sell it earlier this year.
The buyer is believed to a London property company Harkalm Group, which plans to convert the building, previously known as Alliance House, into a private medical centre.
Features include a sweeping central staircase and views over the square that was the site of the first Lord’s cricket ground.
The sale, handled by agents Winkworth marks the end of a long association with France, commemorated by a plaque unveiled in 1957 by the late Queen Mother to honour the bravery of the agents who left the premises for their dangerous missions in France.
Between 1941 and 1944 it housed the French section of Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) which was set up to organise the Resistance and disrupt the German occupation.
According to the official history of the building “they came to put the finishing touches to their mission, collect their weapon, their cyanide capsule, rehearse their cover story and codes; or they came to be debriefed after returning from a mission. They were all patriots of immense courage and immoveable determination.”
Spies who spent time there includes Resistance leader Jean Moulin who was tortured and killed by the Gestapo in 1943.
The five storey building providing 4650 sq ft of space has been used by the Alliance Francaise de Londres for French tuition since 1988. However, management took the decision to cease “in person” teaching at th end of this year and pivot to online only.
One former teacher said:”After Brexit people stopped applying to work as teachers in London and it became much harder to recruit anyway. It was down to just two teachers by the end of the year, when I started there were about ten. The school also needs a very heavy refurbishment from top to bottom, very little money has been spent.
“The sale is very sad, the building is a part of France that is going to disappear.”
No-one from the Alliance Francaise or Harkalm Group was available for comment.
