Charleston, in

East Sussex East Sussex is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Kent to the north-east, West Sussex to the west, Surrey to the north-west, and the English Channel to the south. The largest settlement ...

, is a property associated with the

Bloomsbury group The Bloomsbury Group was a group of associated British writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20th century. Among the people involved in the group were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, a ...

, that is open to the public. It was the country home of

Vanessa Bell Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen). Early life and education Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...

and

Duncan Grant Duncan James Corrowr Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a Scottish painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets, and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. His father was Bartle Grant, a "poverty-stricken" major ...

and is an example of their decorative style within a domestic context, representing the fruition of more than sixty years of artistic creativity. In addition to the house and artists' garden, Charleston hosts a year-round programme of Bloomsbury and contemporary exhibitions in a suite of galleries designed by Jamie Fobert Architects which opened in September 2018. Two restored barns are home to The Threshing Barn café and The Hay Barn where events and workshops are held throughout the year. The Outer Studio at Charleston hosts a permanent display of Bell and Grant's Famous Women Dinner Service, and there is also a shop selling Bloomsbury-inspired art, homeware fabrics, fashion, books and stationery. Charleston hosts a number of special events throughout the year, most notably the Charleston Festival, which each May invites artists, writers, thinkers and changemakers to discuss the best in art, literature, ideas and politics, past and present, just as the Bloomsbury group did around the Charleston dining table. The house is located in the village of

Firle Firle (; Sussex dialect: ''Furrel'' ) is a village and civil parish in the Lewes (district), Lewes district of East Sussex, England. Firle refers to an Old English word ''fierol'' meaning overgrown with oak. Although the original division of ...

, in the

Lewes District Lewes is a local government district in East Sussex, England. The district is named after the town of Lewes. The largest town is Seaford, and the council is based in Newhaven. The district also includes the towns of Peacehaven and Telscombe an ...

of East Sussex, England.

History

In 1916 the artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant moved to Sussex with their unconventional household when Grant, under the terms of his exemption from military service, was employed at a nearby farm together with

David Garnett David Garnett (9 March 1892 – 17 February 1981) was an English writer and publisher. As a child, he had a cloak made of rabbit skin and thus received the nickname "Bunny", by which he was known to friends and intimates all his life. Early ...

. Over the following half-century Charleston became the country meeting place for the group of artists, writers and intellectuals known as Bloomsbury. Garnett,

Clive Bell Arthur Clive Heward Bell (16 September 1881 – 17 September 1964) was an English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group. He developed the art theory known as significant form. Biography Early life and education Bell ...

and Maynard Keynes lived at Charleston for considerable periods;

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

and

Leonard Woolf Leonard Sidney Woolf (; – ) was a British List of political theorists, political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party and the Fabian Socie ...

E. M. Forster Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularly '' A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910) and '' A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous shor ...

Lytton Strachey Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychology, psychologic ...

and

Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and art critic, critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent ...

were frequent visitors. Inspired by Italian fresco painting and the

Post-Impressionists Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction aga ...

, the artists decorated the walls, doors and furniture at Charleston. The walled garden was redesigned in a style reminiscent of southern Europe, with mosaics, box hedges, gravel pathways and ponds, but with a touch of Bloomsbury humour in the placing of the statuary.

"It's most lovely, very solid and simple, with ... perfectly flat windows and wonderful tiled roofs. The pond is most beautiful, with a willow at one side and a stone or flint wall edging it all round the garden part, and a little lawn sloping down to it, with formal bushes on it." — Vanessa Bell

The rooms on show form a complete example of the decorative art of the Bloomsbury artists: murals, painted furniture, ceramics, objects from the

Omega Workshops The Omega Workshops Ltd. was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in July 1913. Shone, Richard. (1999) ''The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant''. Princeton: Princeton University ...

, paintings and textiles. The collection includes work by

Auguste Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; ; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French people, French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionism, Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially femininity, fe ...

Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

, Derain, Matthew Smith, Sickert,

Stephen Tomlin Stephen Tomlin (2 March 1901 – 5 January 1937) was a British artist associated with the Bloomsbury Group, Bloomsbury Set. He was the youngest son of the judge and law lord Thomas, Thomas Tomlin, Baron Tomlin, Lord Tomlin of Ash. Life Tomli ...

(1901–1937) and

Eugène Delacroix Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( ; ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French people, French Romanticism, Romantic artist who was regarded as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: ...

Garden

Charleston's walled garden was created by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant to designs by Roger Fry. Together they transformed vegetable plots and hen runs, essential to the household during the First World War, into a quintessential planted garden mixing Mediterranean influences with cottage garden planting. In the 1920s a grid of gravel paths gave structure to beds of plants chosen by Grant and Bell for their intense colour and silver foliage. These became the subject of many still lifes over their long residence at Charleston.

Dora Carrington Dora de Houghton Carrington (29 March 1893 – 11 March 1932), known generally as Carrington, was an English painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytt ...

wrote of the garden, "Never, never have I seen quite such a wonderful place! ... What excellent things there will be to paint in that garden with the pond and buildings." Part of the garden's sense of luxuriance and surprise comes from the variety of sculpture it contains. Classical forms sit side by side with life-size works by Quentin Bell, mosaic pavements and tile edged pools. The orchard offers shade from the sun and the pond a focus for tranquil contemplation. Above all this was a summer garden for playing and painting, an enchanted retreat from London life. As Vanessa Bell wrote in 1936: "The house seems full of young people in very high spirits, laughing a great deal at their own jokes ... lying about in the garden which is simply a dithering blaze of flowers and butterflies and apples."

Charleston Trust

The Charleston Trust is a charity set up in 1980 to restore and maintain the home of the Bloomsbury Group artists for the benefit of the public. The unique collection at Charleston is illustrative of the art and lifestyle of the influential Bloomsbury Group and has been on show to the public since 1986. Charleston attracts visitors from the local community as well as the rest of the UK and abroad. In the financial year ending 31 December 2020 the Trust's income was £2,078,352, including £722,303 from five government grants. Expenditure was £612,000 in cost of raising funds, and £683,520 on charitable activities.

Covid-19, emergency appeal, and funding

The

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

that broke out in 2020 initially had a devastating financial impact on Charleston, which ordinarily receives no public funding, and relies on income through ticket sales and spend in its shop and café. Charleston received £89,293 from the government's Getting Building Fund in November 2020, and £240,542 in July 2021 for a new cycle path and to resurface the access road. This gave rise to criticism, as the access road is reported to be privately owned by the eighth

Viscount Gage Viscount Gage, of Castle Island in the County of Kerry of the Kingdom of Ireland, is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1720 for Thomas Gage, along with the subsidiary title of Baron Gage, of Castlebar in the County of Mayo ...

, who was a

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

member of the

House of Lords The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest ext ...

until its 1999 reform, and his wife

Alexandra Gage, Viscountess Gage Alexandra Murray Gage, Viscountess Gage (née Templeton; born 1969) is a British academic, businesswoman, and aristocrat. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Brighton, teaching fine art at the university's School of Art and Media. As ...

. Charleston closed to the public during the early part of the pandemic, and the charity launched an Emergency Appeal to raise funds. The Farmhouse was open at the end of 2021 following a Historic England grant.

References

External links

Official website
{{Coord, 50, 50, 32, N, 0, 6, 53, E, display=title Bloomsbury Group locations Historic house museums in East Sussex Art museums and galleries in East Sussex Decorative arts museums in England Literary museums in England