Bloomsbury in Sussex
Study Tours
Dr Wendy Hitchmough
Thursday 7- Friday 8 May 2026
£330
Tour Description
Staying in Lewes for Christmas and New Year in 1910, Virginia Woolf decided that a cottage in the country would provide a refuge from London where she could write. She leased Little Talland House in Firle and, with her sister, Vanessa Bell, decorated the house in Post-Impressionist style. Bloomsbury’s ‘headquarters’ remained at 46 Gordon Square in London but Sussex became increasingly important as a gathering place where members of the Bloomsbury Group could work and discuss their radical ideas.
This tour takes you behind the scenes at Charleston, the farmhouse that Vanessa leased during the first World War so that her partner, Duncan Grant, and his boyfriend, David Garnett could work as Conscientious Objectors. It remained Bell and Grant’s home for over sixty years. We will meet the Head of Research, Collections and Exhibitions and see works in the reserve collection as well as Charleston’s richly decorated interiors. We will visit Berwick Church, decorated by Duncan Grant, Vanessa and Quentin Bell during the Second World War and we will conclude the day with dinner at the White Hart Hotel where Virginia and Leonard Woolf bought Monk’s House at auction in the summer of 1919.
Day two will begin with an archive session at The Keep, where you can examine some of Bloomsbury’s intimate letters and diaries. This will include Virginia Woolf’s original engagement diaries and her letters to Leonard. Following a seminar there will be time for lunch in Lewes and we will visit Charleston’s current exhibition in the new galleries there. We will then complete our study tour with a visit Monk’s House, the home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf at Rodmell before returning to Lewes.
Lecturer's Biography
Dr Wendy Hitchmough is emeritus senior lecturer at the University of Sussex. She is the author of nine books including Vanessa Bell. The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical (Yale March 2025), and The Bloomsbury Look (Yale 2020). Her extensive research draws on her experience of working from 2001-13 at Charleston where she was curator. Wendy moved from Charleston to Historic Royal Palaces where she was Head of Historic Buildings & Research until 2018. She then worked at the University of Sussex and retired from teaching in 2022 to focus on writing. Her earlier books include Arts and Crafts Gardens (V&A Publications 2005) and C.F.A. Voysey (Phaidon Press 1995).