The Woolfs lived in flat 13, with Virginia writing most of her first novel, The Voyage Out (1915) while living there. The block of flats was rebuilt in the 1930s, but the entrance on Clifford’s Inn Passage, where the plaque is placed, is where the Woolf’s would have entered the building.
The Passage, one of the oldest alleys in London, is the route which the Woolfs would have used to go to the Cock Tavern on Fleet Street.
Other tenants in the building during the Woolfs’ residency were individuals working in law, as well as photographers, tailors, architects, and artists including both painting and sculpture. The building was also used for commercial purposes. It was home to organizations including the Society of Women Writers and Journalists, the London Typographical Society, the London Positivist Society and the Art Workers’ Guild.
When ongoing construction work in the neighborhood is finished and the Clifford’s Inn Passage undergoes renovation and tree planting, the VWSGB will hold an unveiling ceremony for the plaque.
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Virginia did not write ‘most’ of The Voyage Out at Clifford’s Inn. See Leonard Woolf, Beginning Again, 87: ‘…when we settled into Clifford’s Inn … Virginia was *rewriting* the *last chapters* of The Voyage Out … She finished it in February [1913]’.
The rebuilt Clifford’s Inn (1936) was where David Garnett and Angelica Bell began married life at no 134. A small reception was held there on 8 May 1942 after the civil ceremony. See Frances Partridge, A Pacifist’s War, p. 133. Fanny was there, the mother of the short-live Burgo who would marry Angelica’s second-born daughter Henrietta in 1962.
Ka Cox lived at 10 Clifford’s Inn, 1914-18 (Holborn 5711). More importantly, the Inn was where the first two Friday Club exhibitions were held in 1906 and 1907, with some of Vanessa Bell’s early work, including a portrait of her brother Adrian. Virginia attended a dance there in 1906 (Letters 1:230-1), though she does not mention the place, which is detectable from numerous reviews.