NEW – Bloomsbury in Sussex
Dr Wendy Hitchmough
Wednesday 7 – Thursday 8 May 2025
£330
This tour is now fully booked but we are happy receive applications for the waiting list and/or expressions of interest for a re-run at a future date: please email us at short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk.
Course 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 60 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 have an archive session at The Keep, where you can examine some of Bloomsbury’s intimate letters and diaries. We will conclude the day with a seminar and dinner.
Day 2 will begin with the Vanessa Bell exhibition at Charleston’s new galleries in Lewes. We will then visit Monk’s House, the home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf at Rodmell. We will complete our Study Tour with a visit to Vita Sackville-West’s writing tower and the extraordinary gardens at Sissinghurst 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).