Every writer has a relationship to the room. In this case, the relationship is to the rooms, the furniture, the house, the garden, the site and the entire area of East Sussex.
In 1916 Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant moved into Charleston Farmhouse.
http://www.charleston.org.uk
It became the gathering place of the Bloomsbury Group, - Bell and Grant along with Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Dora Carrington and John Maynard Keynes to name a few - some of the most influential and visionary artists, writers and economists of the 20th Century.
After an extraordinary one million pound restoration by The Charleston Trust, created in 1980,
http://www.charleston.org.uk/about-the-trust/the-charleston-trust/ the house glows.
Tours of over an hour hardly scratch the surface of what the eye has to travel: framed paintings, hand made ceramic lamps, needlepoint pillows and rugs, painted doors, stenciled walls, china, original fabrics on beds, sofas and chairs, and soothing views from bedroom windows to the lovely walled garden below, all products of the output of this remarkable group of people and their friends.
Charleston is important. Art is important. The house is an outstanding example of design and colour moving off the boundaries of the canvas onto the walls, the floors, the furniture, the garden as well as blurring of boundaries of relationships. All here is alive and influences how art is seen though the prisms of writers, filmmakers, gardeners, designers and musicians.
There is no photography permitted inside the house, so enjoy the garden. It is sublime.
Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant's studio is to the right of the house. Created in 1925 to designs by Roger Fry.
The view from the garden room.
The greenhouse in the distance.
The greenhouse.
A lovely place to sit and reflect back to the house and studio.
The largest poppy I have ever seen. There is a poem in that - and the colour.
Walking the path outside the garden back to the house.
The pond in front of the house and the view back to the hills. Sit here and contemplate.
Reverse view to the entrance.
Plan to visit Charleston. See what's on. Book classes in perfume making, painted furniture effects, Capturing Charleston with iPads, Life drawing, pond life, or Young Bohemians Mini Summer School (ages 8-12). Take a twilight tour.
Celebrate The Charleston Centenary Project and help support this artistic marvel.
http://www.charleston.org.uk/visit/
Additional links to
MONK'S HOUSE and BERWICK CHURCH
on the following website
http://bloomsburyinsussex.org.uk
