Don’t do this at home

©National Trust

Katherine Sharp, the curator for Monk’s House (which I featured earlier), has just told me of a recent gift to the house of some books once owned by Virginia Woolf.

©National Trust

They are a set of the Arden edition of Shakespeare which Virginia covered with coloured paper in 1936. Her diary entry for 25 February 1936 reads: “… I’ve had headaches. Vanquish them by lying still and binding books …” – by ‘binding’ she meant re-covering the books with glued paper.

Virginia Woolf's bedroom at Monks House. ©NTPL/Eric Crichton

Although I wouldn’t personally recommend glueing coloured paper all over your books, it does vividly illustrate the earthy modernist taste of the Bloomsbury Group. And of course it is also poignant evidence of Virginia’s need to soothe her sometimes fragile state of mind with repetitive manual work.

Monks House, Rodmell, East Sussex. ©NTPL/Eric Crichton

The books come with a bookcase that is recorded as being in the Woolfs’ London home in the late 1930s and later came to Monk’s House. After Leonard’s death in 1969 the bookcase and the books were given to Lady Lintott, a longstanding friend of the Woolfs who lived nearby in Rodmell. Her children have now donated it to Monk’s House.

A writer’s retreat

The Sitting Room at Monk's House. The armchair was one of Virginia Woolf's favourite reading chairs. It is upholstered in a fabric designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell. ©NTPL/Eric Crichton

Courtney Barnes at Style Court has just added a post inspired by the 1992 Sally Potter film based on Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando (and she even quoted me, which is flattering). So I thought I would show a few images of the house in Rodmell, East Sussex, that Virginia Woolf shared with her husband Leonard.

The walled garden next to Monks House. Leonard Woolf was a particularly keen gardener. ©NTPL/Eric Crichton

Virginia and Leonard bought Monk’s House in 1919 for £700. It was ‘an unpretending house’ as Virginia called it, and she liked it that way.

Virginia Woolf's bedroom. The pale green was a favourite colour. ©NTPL/Eric Crichton

Life was fairly spartan at Monk’s House. When the Woolfs’ friend E.M. Forster visited he burnt his trousers trying to get warm beside the little stove in his room.

The Dining Room. The canvas-work mirror frame was designed by Duncan Grant. He also designed the chairs, together with Vanessa Bell. The naive painting over the chimney came with the house. ©NTPL/Eric Crichton

As Virginia made more money from her books, however, various improvements and extensions were added. In 1929 the house was ‘luxurious to the point of electric fires in the bedrooms’.

The writing lodge. ©NTPL/Eric Crichton

When the Woolfs had no visitors, Virginia would write for three hours every morning in her writing lodge in the garden.

Another view of the sitting room. ©NTPL/Eric Crichton

Monks House was acquired by the National Trust in 1980 with grants from the University of Sussex, the Department of the Environment and the Royal Oak Foundation.

Humble beginnings

Alfriston Clergy House in 1894. ©NTPL

Alfriston Clergy House, in East Sussex, was the first house to be acquired by the National Trust. It was bought for £10 in 1896, a year after the Trust’s founding.

Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley (1851-1920). ©NTPL

This acquisition demonstrates the awakening interest at the end of the nineteenth century in the fate of beautiful old buildings. The vicar of Alfriston had alerted Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, one of the founders of the National Trust, to the fact that the house was ruinous and about to be demolished.

Octavia Hill (1838-1912), in a copy of a portrait by John Singer Sargent. ©NTPL

Canon Rawnsley and Octavia Hill, another of the founders, recognised the importance of the Clergy House as one of the few fourteenth-century hall houses that survived in a more or less unaltered state.

Although small, Alfriston Clergy House has a central hall that rises to the roof. The floor is made of rammed chalk sealed with sour milk, a practice local to Sussex.

The west front of Alfriston Clergy House. The timbering on the right was rebuilt after a fire in the seventeenth century. ©NTPL/Andrew Butler

Hill was tireless in her efforts to raise funds for the restoration of the house. Her passionate activism was a driving force behind the National Trust in its early years.

She was particularly keen to preserve areas of natural beauty so that they could serve as, in her words, ‘open-air sitting rooms for the poor’.

The vegetable garden. ©NTPL/Andrew Butler

Support also came from Sir Robert Witt, the first tenant of the house, who was honorary secretary to the National Art Collections Fund. That organisation is now called the Art Fund and it is still a staunch supporter of the National Trust’s work.

I shall be away for a few days, back on 30 September.