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The Mary Beale Allbrook Farm Trust
info@marybealetrust.org.uk 

 

CHRONOLOGY click here

Protest over proposed development at Allbrook Farm

URGENT - The Trust has appealed to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
to upgrade the listing of Allbrook Farm - the UK's only 17th century artists' studio

Mary Beale (1633-1699) was one of the few professional women painters working before 1800

English Heritage and the DCMS gave this historic site minimum grade II protection
which does not reflect the 'special historic interest' of its association with Mary Beale
and fails to protect its interior and its green land

The historic farmhouse will not be demolished, it will be badly damaged by
inept 'modernisation', hemmed in within a few feet by new buildings,
and will loose its traditional, unspoilt green field land forever

The Mary Beale Allbrook Farm Trust - and the people of Allbrook - call on the DCMS to review
its decision, upgrade the listing of Allbrook Farmhouse to include its historic setting
and thereby acknowledge the achievement of this truly unique woman artist

People of Allbrook - thank you for hard work and warm support, but the battle is not over yet! Your MP, Chris Huhne, is behind our campaign 100% and the Trust is to appear on Meridian television news on Tuesday 25 March

People of the UK - do something! Click to write NOW to the DCMS asking them to upgrade Allbrook Farmhouse to garde I or at least grade II*

And, all of those who want to promote recognition of women's contribution to our cultural and intellectual history - and everyone else

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE INTERNATIONAL PETITION


Mary Beale - a professional artist in seventeenth-century England



                                         

                                    Aside from its value as a particularly striking  - and increasingly rare - example of local vernacular architecture, Allbrook Farmhouse is unique as the only known surviving artists’ studio from the 17th century, in Britain. The 1650s house was the home and studio of painter Mary Beale (1633-1699), her husband Charles, son Bartholomew ‘Bat’ Beale and his brother Charles from 1665 to 1670. Here Mary practiced her art and honed her craft, while Charles prepared her painting materials and her sons, no doubt, got up to all the things that small boys usually do.

Mary and her family moved to Allbrook when plague was raging through London. They chose Hampshire as their new home because their kinsman Samuel Woodforde had ancestral property in the county, at Binsted. Little is currently known of the portraits painted by Mary Beale before her move to Allbrook. By the time she returned to London, Mary's income from her art was sufficient to afford a large house Pall Mall and here her thriving portraiture studio was established. It is clear, therefore, that Mary's time at Allbrook was a turning point in her career.

Mary Beale's work hangs in public and private collections all over the world, including the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain and the Geffrye Museum in London. The detail of Mary Beale's self-portrait of c1675-80, shown above, is reproduced courtesy of St Edmundsbury Heritage Service in Suffolk and forms part of the largest public collection of Beale's work. Mary was an extremely prolific artist and her body of work includes many formal portraits of the great and the good. Equally if not more fascinating, however, are the self-portraits and those of her family, servants and closest friends.

 

Mary Beale’s London home and studio no longer exist.

The Beales retained ownership of Allbrook Farm after they returned to London, letting it to a local man. Since the early 1980s this wonderful place has lain empty, looted and neglected. Now it faces a new threat. The current owners are planning to hem the building in with executive-style houses, garages and rubbish bin storage sheds.

Trees, wildflowers and grass will be replaced by concrete, breeze blocks and tarmac.
 

Help us to save historic Allbrook Farmhouse and its land from the mutilation of development. A trust has been formed to buy, conserve and repair the house and reinstate it as a family home - but with regular access for the public. Allbrook Farm land - already an attraction for local people - would be carefully managed as a conservation area and would be linked to the Itchen Navigation path which passes just yards from the eastern aspect of the Farmhouse.

 

MEDIA coverage - Mary Beale's Allbrook Farm and the battle to save it

 





'Listen Again' to BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour (Tuesday 17 July) and see the Mary Beale page of the BBC website

click here for a ground-breaking Observer (24 June) newspaper article

or here for a revealing piece in Private Eye (06-19 July)

read the New Statesman

click below for

Cornerstone magazine, The Independent on Sunday and the Hampshire Chronicle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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