Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden

The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden stands in St Ives, Cornwall, on the site of Trewyn Studio where the 20th-century sculptor lived and worked for 26 years. Barbara Hepworth bought the property in 1949 and used it as both home and workshop until her death in a studio fire in 1975. The museum preserves her living room exactly as she left it, with her furniture still in place. Her workshop remains filled with tools, half-finished carvings, and blocks of stone waiting to be shaped. Princess Anne visited the studio in 1972 during a trip to St Ives. The collection includes many of Hepworth’s favourite sculptures displayed in the secluded garden. Her workshop holds two large Galway limestone blocks carved for the Festival of Britain in 1951. Photographs show the progress of this work, while upstairs she carved wood and prepared plaster models for bronze casts. The garden was designed with help from her friend, composer Priaulx Rainier. After Hepworth’s death, her family opened the museum in 1976 following her wishes. In 1980, they entrusted it to the Tate gallery, which still manages the site today. Visitors find Hepworth’s living room preserved with her belongings, while the workshop shows her tools and materials exactly as she used them. The garden contains many of her sculptures set among plants and trees arranged during her lifetime. Unfinished stones remain in the yard, described by one visitor as waiting for their turn beneath the chisel. Upstairs rooms reveal where she carved wood and shaped plaster for bronzes. The museum offers a quiet space to see her life’s work in the place she created it.