Latest Homes Sussex magazine

Andrew Kay Meets Charleston Trust Director Colin McKenzie in the kitchen of the most famous farmhouse in Sussex

Charleston Farmhouse was the rural retreat of the Bloomsbury set, a group of artists, writers and free thinkers whose often radical ideas, works and life-style choices delighted the art world but often shocked the nation. In 1916 artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant moved to Sussex with their unconventional household. For 50 years this farm house became the country base for a group of artists, writers and intellectuals. Clive Bell, David Garnett and Maynard Keynes lived at Charleston for considerable periods; Virginia and Leonard Woolf, E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry were regular visitors. Bell and Grant decorated the house in their own “Omega Workshop” style and their, and their guests and friends, lives and romances crossed in a way that was sometimes stranger than fiction. In 1986 The Charleston Trust was formed to restore and preserve this extraordinary home and the artworks in it, many painted directly onto the walls and fixtures. Totally self-sustaining, it has become one of the jewels in our county’s rich history and a place of pilgrimage for art and literature lovers the world over.

I met Director Colin McKenzie on a cold January afternoon and we sat by the Aga in the kitchen, one of the rooms not included in the regular tour, where he described how he came to be at Charleston and the passion that drives the team that keep this small but extraordinary museum going from strength to strength.

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Andrew Kay on woolies, wellies and four wheel drives

Are you as concerned about global warming as I am? I mean it has been a particularly mild winter so far, a bit wet and drab maybe with a few cold snaps. But on the whole it hasn’t been a three woolies and a vest type of winter as yet. That said, by the time you read this it could be sub-zero, with drifts of snow and black ice.

I grew up with snow, living as I did in Lancashire. When it snowed it stuck, and when it stuck the school buses did not run. It was a four mile walk from our house to school along a winding country lane. Being on the edge of the Lancashire plain meant that the wind would blow in from the Irish Sea and whip across the flat open farm-land like a blade. If there was snow it would very soon drift on the bends in the road and make matters far worse.

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The Landlady

I am the sort of person who likes to get on with things – no dilly-dallying or fannying about on the fence for me. Almost without realising it, I usually manage to end up in control of most situations – apart from those involving The Boyfriend, who is very much in possession of a mind of his own and will therefore not be controlled by me, or anyone else for that matter. But I digress. The current situation I seem to have ended up in control of, is the acquisition of the freehold of the flat in Hastings belonging to Katy and I.

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This month, Katie highlights the hypocrisy of the UK’s anti-American feeling

Here’s an entertaining social experiment for you: think back to the last time you saw a prime piece of American-bashing (comedy panel shows, dinner parties or newspaper columns are all ideal). Got it? Good – now replace ‘American’ with an oppressed racial group. There we go. Doesn’t it feel good to have a chuckle about our superiority to those lazy, ignorant, warmongerers who can’t even find Europe on a map of the world? Good harmless fun, eh?

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