Hepworth’s studio at No 7

Stephenson at No 8

I enjoyed seeing the Hepworth Exhibition at Tate Britain last weekend and was interested to see photographs of the studio where she lived and worked in Hampstead. I’m happily staying in Parkhill Road a stone’s throw from Hepworth’s studio and lived next-door at No 8 the Mall Studios for a year.
At the bottom of our garden in Parkhill Road is an old gate that would have opened onto a terrace of Victorian artist’s studios. Hidden away in down a shady alley, the Mall Studios were purpose-built by Thomas Batterbury in 1872 with high ceilings, skylights and huge sash windows to let in as much light as possible. At No 8, No 8, Mall Studios was home to Walter Sickert (1860–1942) and the lease was taken on by John Cecil Stephenson (1889–1965) and then lived in by another painter. Up some steep stairs was a balcony with racks for storing stretchers and canvases – it still smells of turpentine.
 Barbara Hepworth lived at No 7, Mall Studios, 1932 with her first husband John Skeaping and then with Ben Nicholson. Hepworth had triplets while living there though managed to continue to produce some work. The studios are quite small for a couple working at home with 4 children, though Hepworth shows great pragmatism in her letters that show she rented two other studios in the same row, one for Nicolson and another for the children and nanny. Photographs show her working in a low extension in the garden with a corrugated-iron roof, which is no longer there. Other neighbours on the Mall were sculptor James Oakley (1878–1959) at No 5 and writer and art critic Herbert Read at No 3.

Just around the corner were Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Agatha Christie, László Moholy-Nagy and Jack Pritchard in Wells Coates’ Isokon Lawn Road Flats (1933). Alexander Calder and Naum Gabo, CRW Nevinson, Roland Penrose and Paul Nash were locals too. Hepworth’s cousin Jack Hepworth (1911-2003) lived at 22 Parkhill Road, exhibiting under the name Arthur Jackson. When Piet Mondrian left France, their artist friends found him a space to live and work in 60 Parkhill Road backing onto the Mall. Henry Moore also lived at 11a Parkhill Road and took over the No 7 when Hepworth and Nicolson left London for St Ives.

In 1940 the Mall Studios suffered bomb damage (you can see the location on Bomb Sight ).