InfoBritain

 

Monk's House, East Sussex

Monk's House near Lewes in East Sussex, was Virginia Woolf's country retreat. She and her husband bought it in 1919, and the couple often stayed there during her happiest and most creative years between the publication of Mrs Dalloway in 1925, and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Virginia had always lived in London, and loved the city; but her fragile, creative personality needed a place to assimilate and recover from all the stimulation of London life. Monk's House provided the peace she needed. But the peace was only one side of the balance she required. The necessary peace could also be deeply unsettling: Virginia wrote of Monk's House in 1925:

"Often down here I have entered into a sanctuary, a nunnery; had a religious retreat; of great agony once; and always some terror: so afraid one is of loneliness: of seeing the bottom of the vessel. That is one of the experiences I have had here in some Augusts; and got then to a consciousness of what I call 'reality': a thing I see before me; something abstract; but residing in the downs or sky; beside which nothing matters; in which I shall rest and continue to exist. Reality I call it. And I fancy sometimes this is the most necessary thing to me: that which I seek."

The advent of war in 1939 upset the fragile balance of Virginia Woolf's life. The risk of bombing in London meant that Virginia and her husband Leonard spent more and more time at Monk's House. She wrote to her niece Angelica Bell in 1939 of the changes to life in wartime London, changes that were eventually to drive her away from her beloved home in the squares of Bloomsbury:

"You don't know what a queer place London is. Here we are running out of each other's houses with torches and gas masks. Black night descends. Rain pours. Vast caterpillars are now excavating trenches in the Square. Shops shut at 5 or so. Many windows remain black all day. The streets are a hurry scurry of people walking. Ambulances abound. Very stout women wear blue trousers. No one ever sits down. The buses are quick but rare."

Virginia and Leonard's home at 52 Tavistock Square was destroyed by a bomb in October 1940. They had taken out a lease on a house in nearby Macklenburgh Square, but that was house was virtually abandoned as the Woolf's took refuge in East Sussex. At Monk's House Virginia slowly fell into a serious depression. It was here in March 1941 that she wrote a final loving note to Leonard, before drowning herself in the River Ouse. Monk's House is, therefore, a source of light and darkness in the life of Virginia Woolf. The activity of London was in a sense as much of a rest as the peace of East Sussex. Reality was something abstract to Virginia, something that could not be found, and yet which existed in the downs and sky around Monk's House. This reality is what Virginia said she searched for: this search does not end, there is no rest, simply because life wishes to continue to exist. The final rest comes in a place where there is none, and I like to picture Virginia continuing in some way, going for walks in the country side around Monk's House, just as Mrs Dalloway sees a continuing existence in the streets of London: "...or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived...".

The garden writing room where Virginia worked has been preserved, and contains extracts from her diaries, and selection of her photographs.

Countryside near Monk's House

Monk's House is off the A27 south west of Lewes. From the A27 follow signs to Kingston and the Rodmell village. Turn left at the Abergavenny Pub. The turning is easy to miss. There is no brown tourist sign.

The South Downs Way passes within three quarters of a mile of the house.

Opening Times: The property, owned by the National Trust, is open from 2nd April to 29th October, 2pm - 5.30pm on Wednesday and Saturday only.

Access: the house would be difficult for people with mobility problems. The grounds are partly accessible.

Contact:

telephone: 01323 870001

e-mail: monkshouse@nationaltrust.org.uk