A break with the Bloomsbury set
Serena Fokschaner visits The Dower House in East Sussex, which is steeped in the heritage of the literary group
‘My mother loved decorating; she had a knack for doing up old houses,” says Cressida Bell, on a tour of her late parents’ home in East Sussex. The Dower House, in Firle, sits at the foot of the South Downs, framed by soaring beechwoods rising to open, barrow-strewn downland. For three decades it was home to Anne Olivier Bell, who edited five volumes of Virginia Woolf ’s diaries, and Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf’s nephew, who was an artist, academic and historian of the Bloomsbury Group. They created a comfortable home infused with the Bloomsbury aesthetic of art and colour. The Bells’ hospitality was legendary, too. Actors, historians, writers and lawyers were regular visitors for parties fuelled by the Bell’s Special, a mix of gin, lime cordial and ginger beer based on a recipe concocted by the spy Guy Burgess. On one occasion, the singer Patti Smith gave a private concert in the kitchen.
When Anne (known to the family as Olivier) died last year, aged 102, she left the house to Cressida, a renowned textile designer, and her older siblings, the artist Julian Bell, and social historian Virginia Nicholson. Conscious that they had inherited a cultural legacy, they faced a dilemma. “My mother cared deeply about this house, it was her creation, and she’d always wanted it to stay in the family,” explains Cressida. “It’s been an important part of our lives, it’s where we gathered as a family. But none of us are ready to live here permanently.”
So they pooled funds to restore the house, which has four bedrooms, and have made it available for shortstay rentals. “In this way, the house
pays for itself, but we know it can’t be changed,” says Cressida. For fans of the Bloomsbury Group, the Dower House is well placed for visiting other shrines to the artistic and literary coterie: Virginia and Leonard Woolf ’s home Monk’s House, in Alfriston, or Charleston Farmhouse, where Quentin spent a bohemian childhood with his parents, art critic Clive and artist Vanessa Bell. The Dower House, says Cressida, “is a mini Charleston,” with the modern perks of Wi-Fi and sprung mattresses.
The more valuable artefacts have been removed for safe keeping but in every other way the house feels almost unchanged since the Bells’ day. There is hand-painted furniture, pottery and shapely statues by Quentin (nicknamed “bustos” by the family). Quentin also painted the “footprint” tiles in the bathroom. But it was Olivier who was the driving force behind the interior, with its yellow walls and decorative antiques. “She rejigged the layout, found the furniture and chose the paint colours,” says Cressida, whose boldly patterned furnishings adorn the house. “If it had been left to my father, he’d have painted everything battleship grey.”
Properties on the Firle estate rarely change hands, but in 1984 the Bells persuaded Nicolas Gage, 8th Viscount Gage, to let them buy the Dower House, on the edge of Firle Park. By then, the 17th-century property had been turned into three small cottages. “It needed lots of work,” recalls Cressida. The steep Jacobean staircase remains, but downstairs Olivier removed walls to create the sociable kitchen with its handmade crockery and inglenook fireplace. She was an excellent cook, and suppers took place around the long farmhouse table: “Olivier used to say it had drunk more wine than the guests.” Outside, they added a studio for Quentin and dug the pond. The long, flintnapped wall was a present from Quentin to Olivier.
The study, where Olivier worked surrounded by index cards and reference books about the Bloomsbury Group, feels similarly untouched. The self-deprecating Olivier (a cousin of Sir Laurence Olivier) described herself as a “woman of no importance”, but in 1945 she was headhunted from the Ministry of Information to become the only woman involved in the so-called “Monuments Men” mission, which rescued works of art looted by the Nazis. “She had stories about accompanying Rembrandts and Rubens in trains across Europe,” says Cressida. Olivier later spent 10 years editing the diaries of Virginia Woolf; scholars writing about the novelist would send Olivier their proofs to be fact-checked. In 2014, she was awarded an MBE for her services to Literature and the Arts.
George Orwell once proposed to her but her first fiancé and “greatest love” was the South African painter Graham Bell (surname coincidental) who was killed during an RAF training accident. He’d been a member of the Euston Road group of artists, and several works by its Thirties members, including William Coldstream and Victor Pasmore, had hung on her bedroom walls.
The west-facing bedroom, on the other side of the house, is where Quentin worked. After leaving Sussex University, where he was a professor of history of art, he settled in to a quiet routine. The half-moonbespectacled academic was happiest in the studio or writing. His handpainted desk is here and the shelves are lined with his books: Ruskin, A New and Noble School: The Pre Raphaelites, his two-volume biography of Virginia Woolf and a work on Charleston.
In the late Seventies, the Bells became instrumental in helping to save Charleston and establish it as an independent trust, whose patrons now include the Duchess of Cornwall. Olivier was a regular at the annual Charleston Festival where she would sit in the front row, mentally noting misstatements from speakers, and attending meetings of the council to ensure that the Bloomsbury ethos was maintained.
The Bells helped kindle the Bloomsbury revival which began in the late Seventies. “We thought the interest would go away, but it hasn’t,” says Cressida. “They pushed boundaries; without them we wouldn’t be dying our hair pink or doing radical things. I think people are fascinated by their lifestyle; how they decorated, what they read.” The Dower House, hopes Cressida, will offer devotees a chance to steep themselves in the Bloomsbury vie boheme, albeit with modern comforts.
‘People are fascinated by their lifestyle; how they decorated, and what they read’