Monk’s House: Virginia Woolf’s Sussex Home

We have spoken about Charleston: the artistic and historical time capsule home to Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. The meeting point for years upon years of intimate gatherings of the intellectual Bloomsbury Group. But Virginia Woolf, one of the most central characters of the group was only briefly mentioned, referenced only as the sister of Vanessa, and the original person to suggest Charleston to her as a home away from London. 

 Being the literary genius she was - and being the enormous fan of Virginia Woolf I am, such a brief feature on my blog would never have sufficed. Luckily, she too had a country home only a stone’s throw from Brighton: and as such, she deserves her own feature as a significant person of Sussex, as does Monk’s House, her and her husband Leonard’s home, as a hugely significant landmark easily visitable for someone local to Brighton and Hove.

The view of Monk's House from the garden

Virginia Woolf, born Adeline Virginia Stephen in 1882, became one of the most significant writers - and literary feminists - of the 20th century. Her most widely-known piece of work is likely A room of one’s own, a literary essay originally given as lectures to the women of Cambridge University, but ultimately published as a book. It paints a picture of the history of women’s presence in the world of fiction, or lack-there-of, and the crucial need for women to strive to make their own money and have a dedicated space to themselves in which to exercise creative freedom, specifically to write. 

 As well as essays, she wrote nine major novels including Mrs Dalloway, a novel following Clarissa Dalloway over the course of a single day as she prepares for a party, and Orlando a fictional biography that features a man who suddenly and inexplicably becomes a woman halfway through, and is largely based on, and is essentially a long love letter to, Virginia’s lover and lifelong friend, the aristocrat and writer Vita Sackville-West. 

Besides fiction, Virginia Woolf was also a renowned critic and diarist: her diaries proving as gripping and entertaining a creative outlet for her as anything else she wrote for the intention of it being read by critics, by the masses, by the world. Her diary entries also provide a profound insight into another aspect of her life that is less glamorous than the huge successes of her novels and the vibrant parties hosted by her Bloomsbury friends: her lifelong struggle with severe mental illness. She suffered from recurring bouts of profound depression, meltdowns that left her bedbound, sometimes even psychosis. Sleepless nights, long periods of appetite loss and wild hallucinations made her life a very unstable one: terrorised by her own mind, and the unresolved traumas of her past, she tried several times, over the course of her life, to end it. 

 Tragically, she eventually succeeded: at the age of 59. The accumulating pressure and terror created by the second world war - including the fact she lived beneath the flight path of enemy planes - and another impending depressive episode of the sort that often preceded the publication and reviews of a new novel, the strain became too much: she filled her pockets with stones and waded into the cold waters of the River Ouse, a short walk from her Sussex home. 

If readers recognise her name but cannot name any of her works, there is a good chance they merely associate it with her famously tragic death. However, I believe it is essential that while her death speaks to her trauma, and often calls for discussion over the potential connection between genius and agony, there is far more to be said about Virginia Woolf and her talents, her charisma, and her friendships, than merely how her life ended. And, having said that, I will try to convince you of the reasons why her house is an essential place to which anyone with even a morsel of interest in brilliant writers of the past should endeavour to visit. 

It was 1919 when Virginia and her husband Leonard first moved into Monk’s House, Rodmell, 10 miles outside of Brighton (and around 7 miles from Charleston in a straight line over the Downs which, of course, Virginia and Leonard were often happy to walk). Having spent most of her adult life in Bloomsbury (hence the name of their group of friends), Monk’s House proved a rather primitive building when they first moved in, without electricity, hot water, a toilet or even a bath. But over the years, as their earning power increased (and her novels became increasingly popular), improvements were constantly being made: the overhaul of the kitchen in 1920 when a solid fuel stove was installed; the installation of a hot water boiler, a bath, sink and toilet after the huge successes of Mrs Dalloway and The Common Reader; and the knocking through of rooms to create large, sunny living spaces. 

Living in the house as it became progressively more modern and functional was a source of ongoing delight for Virginia and Leonard. While Virginia found pleasure in buying furniture and painting the inside of the house (the stairs, the banisters, the dining room walls), Leonard was fixated on the garden, adding greenhouses, knocking down outhouses, while leaving parts of their walls to create ‘garden rooms’, trimming topiaries, collecting fruits from the orchard, and eventually installing a fish pond - his pride and joy. 

 The garden, I would argue, is the element of Monk’s house most worth visiting for, particularly in the Spring or early Summer. There is a sort of melancholic satisfaction found in the tranquil garden of a couple that loved each other so devotedly. Leonard has his own legacy, one as worth reflecting on when visiting Monk’s House as Virginia’s: he was a husband and friend to Virginia like no other I have heard of before or since reading about him. Consistently caring, he would nurse Virginia through her meltdowns: feed her, nurture her, guard her from the woes that might trouble her, unreservedly, through the course of their marriage. After her death he became the guardian of her flame, ensuring her works were passed into the right hands so that the world could read as much of her material as possible.

But Leonard was also a man, and a brilliant one, in his own right. Wildly intelligent like his wife, a talented writer, political theorist and a devoted socialist, Leonard had a passionate view of the world, and the ways in which it could be better for people.

But back to the garden…trailing along the winding paths on a sunny day, wandering through the bursts of daffodils and lavender, one finds themselves emerging onto the green of the Downs to the left, or, following the pathway along to the garden’s perimeter, Virginia’s little writing shed still stands, unchanged, beneath the steeple of St Peter’s Church on the other side of the garden wall - as Virginia called it before they purchased the house “the steeple pointing my boundary.”

Virginia's writing shed, left; St Peter's Church, right

Sitting at her desk, the doors of the shed wide open so she could gaze out across the Downs towards Mount Caburn in the distance, Virginia would write: letters, diaries, her next novel. And now and then along would come Leonard, strolling through his beloved garden, to bring his beloved wife a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits. The desk of this shed is laid out as it would likely have looked back then - piles of books, scattered pieces of scrap paper, bundles of screwed up throwaways (Virginia was self-confessed very disorganised, slightly chaotic when she was writing) - and, amongst the chaos, sits her very own pair of eyeglasses. It is a sight that strikes one with a sudden feeling of sentimentality; one cannot help being overcome with an odd sense of her presence: she is there, but she is not.

 

Virginia's writing desk, upon which sits her actual pair of reading glasses

As is the case with Charleston, it seems a great privilege to be able to enter the house itself, to see each aspect, each room and corridor, with one’s own eyes, as they would have seen it a century ago. Writers, artists, and the like who spent large portions of their lives in houses that still stand today often have modern-day admirers that take pleasure in voyaging out to see them for themselves. What is usually the case these days is that these houses are owned by new families, or have been converted into offices or schools, or knocked down entirely (as is the case with, say, Asheham House - the adored ‘haunted house’ of Virginia and Leonard that they left for Monk’s house). Often, only a Blue Plaque remains, adorning the wall beside the front door, a testament to the significant figure that once lived there. 

 In terms of Virginia Woolf, this could easily have also been the case with all her homes: she lived in several different locations throughout her life: 22 Hyde Park Gate, where she grew up (Blue plaque, but inaccessible), 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury, the very place where the Bloomsbury Group was formed (Blue plaque, but now part of Birkbeck, University of London), and, as previously mentioned, the ‘flawless beauty’ of Asheham House that was bought and  demolished by a cement company. 

 Considering this pattern of houses being sold off, converted and demolished, often an unavoidable process though it is, it imbues Monk’s house with an even greater sense of importance. How easy it can be to lose a heritage site like Monk’s house, like Charleston. Luckily there are always those, often the admirers of the house’s original owners, who object to the loss or destruction. 

 In terms of Monk’s house, after Leonard’s passing in 1969, the house was left to Trekkie Parsons, the close companion of Leonard in his final years, who sold the entire house to the University of Sussex. It was used for some years by visiting academics but eventually, after a campaign by Nigel Nicolson, the house was bought by the National Trust who, with time, restored it as much as possible and opened it to the public as we see it today. 

The bust of Virginia Woolf by Stephen Tomlin; VW's bedroom in the background

Another development just as pleasing as the conservation of Monk’s house itself is the fact that in 2010 the South Downs was designated as a National Park, meaning it will always be protected as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and spared from commercial exploitation. As two people who held Sussex in such high regard, and abhorred the increasing rate of its industrial development (personally grieved, for example, by the demolition of Asheham House), they would have been overjoyed to discover that those quaint rolling greens that surround those quaint country towns would be forever preserved. 

 Today Monk’s House sits tranquil and adored by visiting Woolfians, just as it did a hundred years ago (though will better plumbing), and the Downs that sprawl out around it do so as beautifully and as unperturbed as they did then, still attracting those who like to wander, still inspiring those who like to write.