Whitty Down Farm Studio

Whitty Down Farm, Higher Rocombe, Lyme Regis, Dorset 1988 – 2003

Whitty Down Farm was an old farmhouse with some outbuildings which Alan added to. The farmland had long since been sold off. The high vantage point was to Alan’s liking, although it was windier than he had expected. The building work did not run smoothly and seemed never ending. Alan had installed his ageing kiln, which was now taking longer to complete firings too.

The seclusion of the grounds allowed Wallwork to work, as he put it, “in the minimum or absence of clothing, when the weather allowed. Dust and slip were hard on clothing, but easily hosed off one’s body”.

Business was good both at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in Bovey Tracey, and at Berey Pealing’s shop in Lyme. Alan was also exhibiting regularly in London at the Harlequin Gallery, Greenwich, from the late 1990s, and at The Gallery Upstairs in Henley upon Arden, in twice yearly mixed exhibitions, as he had since the 1980s. He also exhibited with his artist daughter Amanda in Ilminster, under the title of ‘Earth Marks and Birth Works’ in 1998. Wallwork could sell the pots as quickly as he could make them.

Production at Whitty Down Farm included female forms, navels and spiral designs on ovals, snake grooved vases, large pierced crescents, U forms, shield ovals, pierced and indented bowls, giant grooved segmented bowls, heavily pierced ovals, sedimentary layered ovals, eroded pebbles, seedcases, porcelain and stoneware opening forms, encrusted forms, torso forms, nipple forms, cleft spheres, pierced spheres, large crescents, slice forms, segment forms and delta pots.

New forms produced at Whitty Down Farm included a series of massive double skinned forms and some terracotta figurative head planters, which Alan made after a kiln explosion as light relief. Wallwork had narrowly avoided disaster when he blew up his big kiln and for a while he resorted to converting an old small electric kiln to gas with great success. Eventually he rebuilt the big kiln to function perfectly again.

Alan’s health was failing, as was his marriage and he became divorced.

Ground instability in the area had previously worried Alan and when he was made an offer for the property, he took it. He had, for some time, harboured an ambition to live in France, somewhat naively believing that the weather would be good all year round. By this time, Alan had taken up with an old friend Barbara Huxley. They decided to sell up and make the move to France a reality. They took all the stock to Barbara’s home in Blackheath, London, and over many weeks sold off his seconds at Greenwich Market, marking them with an angle grinder as he had done years before. The best of his final British pots, together with fine examples made years before, were exhibited and sold at an exhibition held at the Harlequin Gallery from 31 October to 21 November 2004.

Click Me
Click the link for Alan’s own account of his time at Whitty Down Farm

Here follows a selection of work produced at the Whitty Down Farm Studios