Charleston Farmhouse, the home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant where they entertained their friends and lovers, is an intensely decorated house in the English countryside just 18 miles from the bustle of Brighton. Surrounded by a delightful garden, Charleston was from 1916 the home of Bell and Grant and their unconventional household.
The Bloomsbury Group
The name was associated with a band of people united in their belief in the importance of the arts and personal freedom, who all studied or lived in a corner of Fitzrovia in London that became known as Bloomsbury. They were pacifists with modern attitudes towards feminism and sexuality and the best known of them were Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa Bell, Leonard Woolf, Duncan Grant, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster, Roger Fry, Desmond McCarthy and David Garnett. They re-acted against the social mores of the tmes, bourgeois habits and the conventions of Victorian life and if their seeking after personal pleasure led to triangles and complicated relationships, everyone seems to have accepted this – even Bell’s husband Clive.
In lieu of military service during the First World War pacifists had to do land work, so buying a place in the country was an ideal solution. Virginia Woolf (who lived in nearby Monk’s House) found Charleston Farmhouse and Vanessa promptly rented it and moved in with her two sons Quentin and Julian. Soon afterwards she was joined by her lover Duncan Grant (her husband Clive Bell remained in London, but joined them later) and eventually some of Duncan’s male lovers began to visit on a regular basis.
The Interior of Charleston in Sussex
It would appear that neither Duncan Grant nor Vanessa Bell could leave anything unpainted and examples of their work are everywhere, on door panels, walls, wainscoting; even in the space under the windows they painted murals. In an unrestrained approach to art Vanessa painted directly on to walls and furniture and in the dining room the circular wooden table is covered with Vanessa’s distinctive “circles”. Around this table would have sat people like Oliver and Lytton Strachey, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Duncan Grant, David Garnett and John Maynard Keynes and one can only wonder if the conversation was as high-minded as their writings on criticism on art.
They filled the rooms with textiles and paintings from artists they admired. The walls of one room Vanessa painted black (over 6 layers of wallpaper) and then she covered this black base with circles and geometric shapes of her own design. Her bedroom she also painted black. In defiance of convention or perhaps because she genuinely liked it?
Most of the fabrics covering the chairs and most of the curtains are copies done by the Laura Ashley company as the originals were too delicate to continue using, but those in the dining room are the originals.
Many of the paintings on the walls are by famous artists of the day as well as by Duncan and Vanessa themselves. Walter Sickert shows up in a few of the rooms and in others Duncan has made copies of paintings he was forced to sell when money was a bit tight. One of these was a Picasso which he had bought for £4 when he was in Paris: no note has been left as to how much it sold for. The pottery in all the rooms is mostly by Quentin Bell, son of Vanessa and Clive Bell (Julian died in 1937 when in action in the Spanish Civil War) .
There is a set of red lacquer and cane chairs from the Omega Workshop in London which was started by Roger Fry in an effort to give artists something to do and for which they could be paid, and an exquisite 19th century Dutch Marquetry table which thankfully, Vanessa did not embellish with her circles.
Angelica Grant, the only child of Vanessa and Duncan Grant, had some input into the decoration of the rooms at a later date. She married David Garnett, a former lover of her father and they had four children before they separated. Her memoir, Deceived with Kindness, is bitter about both Grant and Bell who did not tell her of her parentage until she was 17.
The Garden at Charleston Farmhouse, Sussex
The garden at Charleston is a delight in summer or winter, a place that provided escape for the artists and, perhaps, inspiration. Leave time to walk around the garden if you can.
Source: My visit to Charleston Farmhouse and the talk given by the guide backs up my knowledge of the Bloomsbury Group and my readings of the Woolfs and Strachey.
Mari Nicholson - Award Winning travel writer and historian, member of British Guild of Travel Writers.Travelwriters.co.uk, and Society of Women Writers and ...
