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Posts Tagged ‘Monk’s House’

Oh, to volunteer at Monk’s House!

Posted in Monk's House, tagged , , , , on Sunday 23 April 2023| Leave a Comment »

The job of my dreams popped up in an email this week: Volunteer guide at Monk’s House. If I lived near Rodmell, East Sussex, I would already be signing up.

Front gate of Monk’s House

If you live near enough, here is what you need to know to have a chance to meet other Woolf enthusiasts while being surrounded by Bloomsbury treasures in the house where Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived from 1919 until their deaths.

Position: House Guide and Welcoming Volunteer

Times Needed in 2003: Friday and Saturday in April and October, and Thursday to Saturday from May to September.  The house is particularly short of volunteers on Saturdays.

Garden volunteer roles are popular and currently booked up. Check the National Trust volunteering website for openings.

Training: Will be provided

Who to contact: monkshouse@nationaltrust.org.uk

Get more details.

Got books?

Monk’s House also put out a request for books related to Virginia Woolf and/or Bloomsbury. If disposing of such volumes, they request that you consider donating them to the Monk’s House second-hand bookshop.

Woolf-related books and other items for sale at Monk’s House in July of 2019, when I last visited.

As the Monk’s House guidebook states, “Books dominated the house.” And books are the first thing you see as you enter through the back doorway. They line the stairs to the second floor.

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Christmas greetings from Virginia Woolf

Posted in art, Monk's House, tagged , , on Saturday 25 December 2021| Leave a Comment »

Let’s pretend Virginia Woolf is sending us all a Christmas card. And what could be more appropriate than this card by renowned collage artist Amanda White?

It features Woolf at home at a snow-covered Monk’s House in Lewes.

Monk’s House Welcome Home

Read more about Virginia Woolf and Christmas

 

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Virginia Woolf at Monk’s House in 1921

Posted in Blogroll, Bloomsbury, Monk's House, tagged , , , on Wednesday 29 September 2021| 1 Comment »

Such Friends blogger Kathleen Dixon Donnelly, who writes about famous literary friends, including the Bloomsbury Group, shared this post about Virginia Woolf and Monk’s House in 1921.

Oh, what a damned bore!” Virginia Woolf, 39, had written to a friend this past summer. She had been ill—and not working—for so long. But now that it is autumn, with lovely weather and long walks out here in the countryside, she is feeling better and writing better than before. Monk’s House, Rodmell Virginia and […]

“Such Friends”:  100 years ago, late September, 1921, Monk’s House, Rodmell, East Sussex — SuchFriends Blog

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Virginia Woolf and Christmas through the years

Posted in diaries, Monk's House, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , on Wednesday 25 December 2019| Leave a Comment »

A Virginia Woolf Word Portrait by Akron, Ohio artist John Sokol received as a Christmas gift in 2016. The words of “A Room of One’s Own” form her visage.

How did Virginia Woolf celebrate Christmas? What thoughts did that day bring to her mind? I thumbed through the edited versions of her diaries to find out.

Editor Anne Olivier Bell includes explanations of where Virginia and Leonard were at Christmas through the years. But while the edited diaries include three entries for days near Christmas, only two of Virginia’s entries were written on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

Here is a synopsis of where the Woolfs spent Christmas from 1917 through 1940, along with what they did and what Virginia wrote.

1917: Leonard and Virginia are at Asheham for Christmas, the rented country house in East Sussex where they spent weekends and holidays from 1912 until 1919. (D1 93)

1916-1922: No mention of the Woolfs’ Christmas is included in Volumes I or II of the edited diaries.

1923: Leonard and Virginia spend Christmas at Monk’s House in Rodmell, Sussex, the 16th-century home they began occupying in 1919. (D2 278)

1924: The Woolfs are again at Monk’s House, arriving on Christmas Eve and bringing Angus Davidson with them. Virginia had collaborated with Quentin Bell to produce a Christmas Supplement to the Charleston Bulletin. It recorded scenes in the life of Duncan Grant. (D2 327)

1925: The Woolfs spend Christmas at Charleston, since Monk’s House is in the midst of alterations. Virginia and Quentin again collaborated on a written piece, this time depicting scenes from the life of Clive Bell. (D3 53)

Vanessa Bell painting of Woolf knitting in an armchair at Asheham

1926: Virginia and Leonard spend Christmas in Cornwall at Eagle’s Nest, Zennor with Ka and Will Arnold-Forster. (D3 119)

1927: The Woolf take the train from London to Lewes on Christmas Eve, then drive to Charleston. They spend three nights there before going back to Monk’s House. Vanessa and Clive are away, spending Christmas with his widowed mother in Wiltshire. (D3 169)

1928-1930: No mention of Christmas is included in Volume III of the diaries for these years.

1931: The diary for this year includes the only entry written on Christmas Day. It reads in part:

Friday Xmas morning

Lytton is still alive this morning. We thought he could not live through the night. It was a moonlit night . . . This may be the turn, or may mean nothing. We are lunching with the Keynes’. Now again all ones sense of him flies out & expands & I begin to think of things I shall say to him, so strong is the desire for life—the triumph of life…

Talk to L. last night about death: its stupidity; what he would feel like if I died. He might give up the Press; but how one must be natural. And the feeling of age coming over us: & the hardship of losing friends; & my dislike of the younger generation; & then I reason, how one must understand. And we are happier now. (D4 55)

1932-1935: The Woolfs are at Monk’s House for Christmas. In 1933, Vita Sackville-West and her two sons are guests for tea. (D4 133, 195, 266, 360)

1936-1938: Virginia and Leonard are again at Monk’s House. In 1936, they have lunch and tea with Lydia and Maynard Keynes, beginning a Christmas tradition. This year, the tea is at Tilton. In 1937, the Woolfs host lunch for the four of them. In 1938, tea is at Tilton and Christmas dinner at Charleston. (D4 44, 122, 193)

1939: The Woolfs are at Monk’s House and bicycle to Charleston in a fog for Christmas dinner. (D4 252)

1940: At Monk’s House, Virginia pens a two-part entry dated Tuesday 24 December, which contrasts the soberness of life during wartime with the natural beauty of the countryside.The second portion reads in part:

[Later] 24th Dec. Christmas Eve, & I didnt like to pull the curtains so black were Leonard & Virginia against the sky…and then the walk by the wall; & the church; & the great tithe barn. How England consoles & warms one, in the deep hollows, where the past stands almost stagnant. And the little spire across the fields…

Yes, our old age is not going to be sunny orchard drowse. By shutting down the fire curtain, though, I find I can live in the moment; which is good; why yield a moment to regret or envy or worry? Why indeed? (D5 346)

The doorway to Virginia Woolf’s bedroom on a sunny July day at Monk’s House, Rodmell, Sussex.

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A pilgrimage to Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House

Posted in Monk's House, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , on Thursday 1 August 2019| 8 Comments »

Once our Literature Cambridge course on Virginia Woolf’s Gardens was over, it was time for a pilgrimage. So on a bright and sunny July Saturday, we climbed aboard our coach and headed to Monk’s House from Cambridge.

Our driver dropped us off in Rodmell after our three-hour trip and we literally headed down The Street. After a brief walk, we arrived at the front gate of the country home that Virginia and Leonard occupied, beginning in 1919.

It was magical. Walking through the gate and down the path, I felt as though I was on hallowed ground, following in the footsteps the Woolfs had made.

We ate lunch in the garden, watched a dramatic reading of a scene from Between the Acts, with Virginia’s Writing Lodge as a backdrop, toured the ground floor of the home fitted out with the Woolfs’ belongings, and wandered through the garden filled with colorful and profuse blooms.

Follow along as I share some photos from our day.

Front gate of Monk’s House

The path behind the Monk’s House gate

As the Monk’s House guidebook states, “Books dominated the house.” And books are the first thing you see as you enter through the low back doorway. They line the stairs to the second floor.

Off to the left is the original Monk’s House sitting room, furnished with pieces ranging from the 17th to the 20th centuries. The still life design on the fire screen is by Duncan Grant, with the needlework by his mother, Ethel Bartle Grant. The upholstered armchair to its right was Virginia’s favorite, featuring a print by Vanessa Bell.

Another view of the original Monk’s House sitting room, which was created when the Woolfs knocked down a partition wall in 1926. It combined areas for reading, writing, and eating. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant painted the dining table — with its geometric design of criss-cross strokes — and four chairs in the early 1930s.

The square coffee table in the center of the room is topped with tiles by Duncan Grant. They depict Venus at her toilet.

A table and six painted chairs with needlework panels designed by Vanessa Bell dominate the dining room. The needlework panels depict bowls of flowers against a window. Grant’s mother completed the embroidery.

The Monk’s House dining room fireplace

The oil portrait of Virginia Woolf painted by Vanessa Bell in 1912. It hangs on a wall between the stairway and the dining room at Monk’s House.

The doorway, framed with roses, that leads from the garden to Virginia Woolf’s bedroom at Monk’s House

Virginia Woolf’s bedroom was part of an extension to Monk’s House built in 1929. It truly was a room of her own as one had to enter it from the garden, as in the photo above.

The fireplace in Virginia Woolf’s ground floor bedroom is decorated with tiles that were a gift from Vanessa Bell. They depict a ship with a lighthouse in the distance.

Virginia Woolf’s Writing Lodge, built in 1934 and and extended in the 1950s by Leonard for his companion Trekkie Parsons. The new space is now used as an exhibition room.

This table sits inside the Writing Lodge covered with her tortoiseshell glasses, folders with handwritten labels that she used for her manuscripts, pen and ink, newspapers, and wads of rumpled paper.

Just one view of the extensive Monk’s House garden, lovingly tended by Leonard, with the central part consisting of a series of small spaces enclosed by plants and joined by a network of narrow paths.

The Millstone Terrace, whose name comes from the millstones the Woolfs found in the garden.

The Fish Pond, one of three ponds Leonard installed, this one on a narrow strip of south-facing garden enclosed on three sides by flint walls.

The lawn at Monk’s House where the Woolfs played bowls and visitors today continue the tradition.

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