Need to add space between SubPlots for X axis label, maybe remove labelling of axis notches

Use subplots_adjust. In your case this looks good:

fig.subplots_adjust(hspace=.5)

to remove the tick labels do this:

ax1.set_xticklabels([])

Similar for the yticklabels. However, you cannot share the x-axis with the plots that do have tick labels.