The Rosary

Audio Transcript

You are standing outside The Rosary, the former home of film pioneer Cecil Hepworth, one of the founding figures of the British film industry.

In 1899, Hepworth leased this house and began building what would become one of Britain’s most important early film studios. Starting with a small stage in the garden and a film laboratory, he quickly established Walton as a centre of innovation in the new world of moving pictures.

By the early 1900s, films were being produced here at an extraordinary pace. Hepworth filmed major national events, including Queen Victoria’s funeral in 1901, and went on to create some of Britain’s earliest feature films, including David Copperfield, Hamlet and Alice in Wonderland.

The studio expanded rapidly, surviving a devastating fire in 1907 and continuing production through the First World War. At its peak, Walton was at the heart of Britain’s growing film industry.

However, changing times brought challenges. In 1923, Hepworth’s company collapsed, and in one of the greatest losses in British film history, his archive of around 2,000 films was destroyed. Today, only a small fraction of his work survives.

The studios continued under new owners for several decades, producing films and later popular television programmes, including The Adventures of Robin Hood in the 1950s. Hollywood stars such as Bette Davis, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Rock Hudson also worked here.

The studios finally closed in 1961, but Walton’s connection with film and television did not end there. Productions ranging from Monty Python sketches to the cult film Psychomania have been filmed in the town.

Although most of the original studio buildings have disappeared, Walton’s place in the story of British cinema began here, at The Rosary, where Cecil Hepworth helped transform filmmaking from a Victorian novelty into a modern entertainment industry.

Did you know?

• By the early 1900s, Cecil Hepworth was producing around 100 films each year.
• He filmed Queen Victoria’s funeral in 1901 and helped create some of Britain’s earliest feature films.
• Around 2,000 Hepworth films were destroyed after the company collapsed, with many of the reels melted down to recover their silver content.

Further Information

From 1899 to the 1950’s

The studios began life in 1899 as Hepworth Studios, when the early film pioneer Cecil Hepworth, leased a house for £36 per annum in Hurst Grove, Walton-on-Thames. He built a film recording studio with electric lighting and a film laboratory. Along with his cousin Monty Wicks, Hepworth created the filmmaking production company Hepwix, and began producing actualities, which were newsreel-like short documentary films. A 15 ft by 8 ft stage was also constructed in the house’s back garden. By the turn of the 20th century Hepworth was making 100 films a year.

By 1905, Hepworth built a larger glass stage and began producing trick films as well as filmed material in other genres. In 1907 the Studio was wrecked by a fire, which killed a member of staff. The Studio continued production through World War I, producing short propaganda films to support the war-effort.

In 1923 Cecil Hepworth’s Hepworth Picture Plays company that was employed at the Studio declared bankruptcy due to the increasing competition from rival film companies.Hepworth’s entire back catalogue of 2000 films were destroyed, a disaster in which 80% of British films made between 1900 and 1929 were lost.

In 1926, the Studio was purchased by Archibald Nettlefold, and renamed as Nettlefold Studios, and began producing comedy silent films, until it was upgraded to sound production with the advent of sound film in the early 1930s. The 1930s saw the Studio mainly producing what were known in the industry as Quota Quickies as part of the Government’s Screen Quotas programme to try to protect England’s cinematic production industry from the rapidly developing commercial threat from the United States of America’s Hollywood production centre.

During World War II the Studio’s buildings were requisitioned and used as a storage facility for the war-effort by the Government, and the Vickers-Armstrong Aircraft Company built two new aircraft construction hangars on the site, to reinforce and disperse its production capacity after damage by enemy bombing attacks at its factory site at Brooklands, Weybridge on 4 September 1940.

Achibald Nettleford died in 1944, and when the Studio reopened post-war it was sold in 1947 to Ernest G. Roy. The declining post-war British film industry meant that only a few domestic films were made there in the late 1940s/1950’s on modest budgets. To keep the Studio afloat an ‘open door’ hiring policy was initiated, where the Studio’s facilities were made available to hire for non-sited companies, which led to a contract being signed with Columbia Pictures, and America actors working in the Studio’s facilities, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bette Davis, and Rock Hudson, etc.

1955 onwards

In 1955 Sapphire Films, owned the American producer Hannah Weinstein, rented the Studio, and subsequently bought it from Ernest R. Boy, renaming them as The Walton Studios. Sapphire Films produced 143 episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood for commercial television on 35mm film at the facility in the late 1950s. Other successful TV series were also produced on the site, including: The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956), The Buccaneers (1956), Sword of Freedom (1957) and The Four Just Men (1959).

Closure & demolition

At the start of the 1960s, the Studio ran into serious difficulty with its financing. Unable to compete with other television studio production facilities, it ceased trading and was closed in March 1961. Most of its equipment was sold to the nearby Shepperton Studios, and some of its 200 former employees transferred there.

All that remains is the Cecil Hepworth Playhouse Theatre.

The Film Industry in Walton

Other connections to the film industry in Walton include: Some of the sketches for Monty Python were filmed in Walton. The old town hall can be seen in one sketch. Another sketch shows an Admiral Nelson dummy being thrown from one of the flats in Wellington Close and the public toilets near the pub “The Regent” are in the background of another sketch.

Location scenes for the cinema film Psychomania (1973) were shot in Walton, including the town’s centre.

ITV sitcom Is It Legal? was shot in Walton.

Series 8 of BBC sitcom Not Going Out features aerial views of Walton-on-Thames between scenes.

TV Series 24 with Kiefer Sutherland filmed at the listed 60’s building in Walton, the Birds Eye Building.