Walton Studios, previously named Hepworth Studios and Nettlefold Studios, was a film production studio in Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, England. Hepworth was a pioneering studio in the early 20th century and released the first film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. 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.
History
leased a house for £36 per annum in Hurst Grove, Walton-on-Thames in 1899 and established Hepworth Studios. The film recording studio he built included 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. During the early stages of the First World War, the studios were used to make films featuring the American star Florence Turner. 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 2,000 films were destroyed, a disaster in which 80% of British films made between 1900 and 1929 were lost.
Nettlefold Studios
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. Archibald Nettlefold 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 American actors working in the Studio's facilities, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bette Davis, and Rock Hudson, etc.
Walton Studios
In 1955 Sapphire Films, owned by the American producer Hannah Weinstein, rented the Studio, and subsequently bought it from Ernest R. Roy, 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, The Buccaneers, Sword of Freedom and The Four Just Men.
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. The majority of the studio's buildings were demolished in the early 1960s, and the site was sold for house building. All that remains of the Studio today is the power generating house, originally built by Hepworth, that was converted into a theatre in 1925. It is now known as the Walton Playhouse, and is primarily used as a theatre for amateur dramatics.
