Monk's House

Monk’s House is a 17th-century weatherboarded cottage in Rodmell, three miles south of Lewes in East Sussex. The Woolfs bought it at auction in 1919 for £700 and turned it into a meeting place for the Bloomsbury Group. Visitors included T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry and Lytton Strachey. Virginia’s sister Vanessa Bell lived nearby at Charleston Farmhouse. The National Trust now runs the house as a writer’s museum. The Woolfs enlarged the modest cottage with a kitchen, bathroom and a two-storey extension in 1929. They bought an extra field to keep the view of Mount Caburn. After their London flat was bombed in 1940 they moved to Rodmell full-time. Virginia wrote many of her novels in the wooden lodge at the bottom of the garden. Jacob’s Room, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves, The Years and Between the Acts were all composed there. Today the ground floor shows the sitting room, dining room, kitchen and Virginia’s bedroom. Her writing lodge stands at the end of the garden with views toward Mount Caburn. Photographs from the Monk’s House Albums capture visitors and family life. The garden still contains the orchard and outbuildings the Woolfs knew. Leonard continued living here until his death in 1969, remaining active in village affairs.