Abbey Arts Centre Ordnance Survey map 1965

The Abbey Arts Centre at 89 Park Road,

New Barnet New Barnet is a neighbourhood on the north east side of the London Borough of Barnet. It is a largely residential North London suburb located east of Chipping Barnet, west of Cockfosters, south of the village of Monken Hadley and north of Oaklei ...

, England, was established in 1946 by William Ohly, an art dealer who ran the Berkeley Galleries in Davies Street, London.

Early history

The area was undeveloped fields until the later part of the nineteenth century when Park Road and other streets were laid out. What is now number 89 was one of the first houses built in Park Road when it was constructed in 1873 and was originally divided into two semi-detached houses. It was known as Hadley Hall and the occupier, according to the Barnet directory for 1890–91, was George William Chambers Kirkham.Jarvis, Lucy. (2016
''Heritage Statement''.
Heritage Collective
Archived here
Census returns show Kirkham to be a Manchester-born businessman in the cotton industry.George Wiliam Chambers Kirkham England and Wales Census, 1911.
Family Search. Retrieved 29 December 2017.

Abbey Folk Park

Around 1930,

John Sebastian Marlowe Ward John Sebastian Marlow Ward (22 December 1885 – 1949) was an English author who published widely on the subject of Freemasonry and esotericism. He was also the leader of a Christian sect, and the founder of the Abbey Folk Park, the earliest exa ...

became the owner of the site which a 1930 plan indicates was no longer divided into two houses. In that year, he purchased a circa 13th century

tithe barn A tithe barn was a type of barn used in much of northern Europe in the Middle Ages for storing rents and tithes. Farmers were required to give one-tenth of their produce to the established church. Tithe barns were usually associated with the vi ...

(grade II listed) and relocated it to the site from

Birchington Birchington-on-Sea is a village in the Thanet district in Kent, England, with a population of 9,961. The village forms part of the civil parish of Birchington. It lies on the coast facing the North Sea, east of the Thames Estuary, between the ...

in Kent. He subsequently converted it to a church and founded a religious community. In 1934 he opened the Abbey Folk Park which by 1937 comprised 46 buildings, included historic shop fronts and a 17th-century smithy saved when East Barnet village was redeveloped and five old cottages relocated from Hadley Green. The park closed in 1940 and did not reopen before Ward sold it and moved his community to Cyprus in 1946 following legal difficulties in England.

Art centre

The Abbey Art Centre and Museum was established in 1946 by William Ohly, an art dealer who ran the Berkeley Galleries in Davies Street, London. A small museum of ethnography in the tithe barn was opened by the director of the Arts Council in 1952. The Abbey attracted many expatriate Australian artists to its doors during the post-war years 1947–1951. It became an early base of operations for artists, trying to gain a foothold in London's contemporary art industry. Australian artists who stayed at the Abbey Art Center included:

Noel Counihan Noel Counihan (4 October 19135 July 1986) was an Australian social realist painter, printmaker, cartoonist and illustrator active in the 1940s and 1950s in Melbourne. An atheist, communist, and art activist, Counihan made art in response to the p ...

Leonard French Leonard William French OBE (8 October 1928 – 10 January 2017) was an Australian artist, known principally for major stained glass works. French was born in Brunswick, Victoria to a family of Cornish origin. His stained glass creation ...

James Gleeson James Timothy Gleeson (21 November 1915 – 20 October 2008) was an Australian artist. He served on the board of the National Gallery of Australia. Early life Gleeson was born in the Sydney district of Hornsby in 1915 and attended East Sydn ...

, Peter Graham, Douglas Green,

Stacha Halpern Stanislav "Stacha" Halpern (20 October 1919 – 28 January 1969) was a Polish Australian painter and sculptor. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Halpern emigrated to Australia. A decade later he became a naturalised Australian citi ...

Grahame King Grahame Edwin King (23 February 1915 – 11 October 2008) was a master Australian printmaker, who has been called the "patron saint of contemporary Australian printmaking".Grishin, 41. He was responsible for the revival of print making in Austra ...

Robert Klippel Robert Klippel AO (19 June 192019 June 2001) was an Australian constructivist sculptor and teacher. He is often described in contemporary art literature as Australia's greatest sculptor. Throughout his career he produced some 1,300 pieces of ...

and

Bernard William Smith Bernard William Smith (3 October 19162 September 2011) was an Australian art historian, art critic and academic, considered the founding father of Australian art history, and one of the country's most important thinkers. His book ''Place, Taste ...

. Other artists who visited the centre include the Scottish painter

Alan Davie James Alan Davie (28 September 1920 – 5 April 2014) was a Scottish painter and musician. Biography Davie was born in Grangemouth, Scotland in 1920, the son of Elizabeth (née Turnbull) and James William Davie, an art teacher and painter who ...

, the Irish painter

Gerard Dilon Gerard is a masculine forename of Proto-Germanic origin, variations of which exist in many Germanic and Romance languages. Like many other early Germanic names, it is dithematic, consisting of two meaningful constituents put together. In this ca ...

, the English painter

Phillip Martin Phillip Martin (March 13, 1926 – February 4, 2010) was a Native Americans in the United States, Native American political leader, the democratically elected Tribal Chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Mississippi Band of Cho ...

, and Helen Grunewald and Inge Neufeld from Austria and Germany respectively. Also known to have visited are

Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced ...

John Heartfield John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was a 20th century German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements ...

and

Lucian Freud Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...

. Animation pioneer

Lotte Reiniger Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger (2 June 1899 – 19 June 1981) was a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation. Her best known films are ''The Adventures of Prince Achmed'', from 1926, the first feature-length animated fil ...

and her husband

Carl Koch (director) Carl Koch or Karl Koch (30 July 1892 in Nümbrecht, Germany – 1 December 1963 in Barnet, England) was an art historian, a German film director and a writer with many secondary credits including collaborations with his wife Lotte Reiniger, the ...

lived and worked at the centre for about 25 years.

Modern ownership

Upon the death of William Ohly in 1954, his wife, Kate Ohly took over the day-to-day running of the Art Centre until her gradual retirement in the 1980's. From the early 1980's William and Kate's daughter, Bienchen Ohly, took over the running and management of the Art Centre As of May 2016, the property is owned by William Ohly's daughter Bienchen Ohly.

References

Sources

*Smith, Bernard, ''Noel Counihan. Artist and Revolutionary'', Oxford University Press Australia 1993 *Smith, Bernard, ''A Pavane for another Time'', Macmillan, 2002, *Heathcote, Christopher, ''A quiet Revolution. The Rise of Australian Art 1946-1968'', Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1995,

External links

*https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2016/09/07/abbey-celebrates-70-years-summer-exhibition-open-studios/
Pathe film of the Abbey Art Centre, New Barnet, 1952.
{{coord, 51.6508, -0.1611, type:landmark_region:GB-BNE, display=title Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Barnet New Barnet Grade II listed buildings in the London Borough of Barnet Tithe barns in Europe Grade II listed barns