Hepworth Studios

Walton Studios (previously named Hepworth Studios and Nettlefold Studios), was a film production studio situated in Walton-on-Thames, in the county of Surrey, in England. The decline of the British cinematic production industry in the mid-20th Century led to a decline in work for the facility, and after failing to financially survive as a television production outlet it was closed in 1961. The Studio was subsequently demolished and the land sold for house-building.

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.

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