Monk’s House is an unassuming, weather-boarded house at the end of the village of Rodmell, the history of which can be traced to the early 16th century. In 1919 it was bought by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Here they received many visitors connected to the Bloomsbury Group, including T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, Roger Fry and Lytton Strachey. Virginia painted the interior walls herself in shades of blue, yellow, pomegranate, and in the oak-beamed sitting room, her favourite shade of green. The tiles around the fireplace in her bedroom were decorated by Vanessa Bell and are inscribed ‘VW from VB 1930’. The oval panel depicts a sailing ship with a lighthouse in the distance, recalling Woolf’s novel, ‘To the lighthouse’ (1927). It was in the small weather-boarded writing room at the bottom of the garden that Woolf wrote this and many other novels.
A collection of painted furniture by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant; pictures by Vanessa Bell, Quentin Bell, Roger Fry and other members of the Bloomsbury Group; and various memorabilia including Virginia Woolf's writing desk and a Chinese shawl given to her by Ottoline Morrell.
