Holy smoke! London’s National Gallery used to allow visitors to spark up just metres from the art

It may come as a surprise that London’s National Gallery proudly unveiled a smoking room only 50 years ago. Apart from the health hazard, it was located close to the galleries, which house some of the world’s greatest paintings. In 1975, when the room was opened, the gallery’s annual report heralded it as a “much-needed facility” where “smoking is allowed, where visitors can simply pause, sit and be at ease”. A photograph in the report shows Betty Churchyard, then the gallery’s head of photography, clutching a cigarette, her packet and matches artfully placed on the floor. Next to her is the gallery’s press officer, Phyllis Rowlands. What happened to the smoking room? It was closed decades ago—smoking in public places was banned in 2007—but the space has now been taken over as part of the Roden Centre for Creative Learning, which opened in February. And thankfully the whiff of stale tobacco has long gone.