Fields of Gold

...at last! I have been looking for rapeseed fields to photograph but there are none around we where live, but today when I was in East Sussex I found this field.

I had a day trip to visit 'Bloomsbury in Sussex'. We started by visiting Charleston Farmhouse, the home of Vanessa Bell, her husband Clive Bell and her homosexual lover Duncan Grant - this became the country meeting place for the group of artists, writers and intellectuals known as Bloomsbury. David Garnett and Maynard Keynes lived at Charleston for considerable periods; Virginia and Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry were frequent visitors. Inspired by Italian fresco painting and the Post-Impressionists, the artists decorated the walls, doors and furniture at Charleston. The walled garden was redesigned in a style reminiscent of southern Europe, with mosaics, box hedges, gravel pathways and ponds, but with a touch of Bloomsbury humour. The house can be seen in my extra photo.

We then went to Berwick church which is well known for the extensive 20th Century murals which cover the nave walls, chancel arch, screen and pulpit. These were painted during the Second World War by the Bloomsbury artists, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Quentin Bell.

The third stop was for a quick pub lunch, and then a walk to Monks House which was the home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf from 1919 until Leonard's death in 1969. This is the home from which Virginia walked to the River Ouse with stones in her pockets to drown herself in 1941.

It was a fascinating visit, and I learned so much about this talented group of people whose eclectic and rather bohemian lifestyle was quite shocking in its day.

I must now finish reading Vanessa and her Sister by Priya Parmar, an extremely interesting novel about Vanessa Bell and her sister Virginia Woolf.