Watts Gallery

Watts Gallery in Compton opened on 1 April 1904, designed by architect Christopher Hatton Turnor in the Arts and Crafts style, to show the work of painter and sculptor G. F. Watts just before his death. His second wife, Mary Fraser-Tytler, helped plan the museum and later designed the ornate Watts Mortuary Chapel in the burial ground nearby. The main gallery building has been Grade II* listed since 1975. A Heritage Lottery Fund grant of 4.3 million pounds paid for a major restoration between 2008 and 2010, and the gallery reopened in June 2011 with more than a hundred Watts paintings back on permanent display, spanning seventy years of his career. Limnerslease, the house and studio where Watts and Fraser-Tytler once lived, reopened after its own restoration in January 2016, completing what the gallery now calls its Artists' Village. A cafe and shop serve visitors on site.