Joan Hassall - Malham and Retirement

Malham and Retirement

Hassall retired to Malham, Yorkshire, in 1976. She had always suffered from bad health, which made it difficult to complete commissions and make a living. She had continued to live in her parents’ house at 88 Kensington Park, and had had to take in lodgers to help maintain the house. In 1973 she inherited Priory Cottage, Malham, from an old friend, Greta Hopkins, and in 1976 she decided to retire there. Her eyesight was failing, and she was overwhelmed by money problems. She said in a letter to Tim Coombs "I often think how wonderful it would have been to live in 88 with an adequate income, as it was such a beautiful house, but it was a 24 year struggle to make ends meet."

She had known Malham since 1932 and had many friends there. Friends made at London continued to visit her, she had her cats and she had her music (she played the spinet, the organ, the flute and the viol). She had the Methodist Chapel at Malham and the Anglican church at Kirkby Malham (her faith had always been important to her).

Malham was her life at the end and she invited two friends from there, Norman Cawood and Barbara Hudson, to be her guests when she went to Buckingham Palace to receive the OBE.

Brian North Lee, her executor, said at her funeral: "Joan’s retirement at Malham was arguably the most happy period of her life." The warmth of his address typifies the feelings that Hassall's friends had for her. Another close friend, and former lodger at 88 Kensington Park Road, Norman Painting, gave the eulogy at her memorial service at St Giles in the Fields.