Sixth Form beats a path to Woolf's door

Year 12 English students journeyed to East Sussex to visit Monk's House, Virginia Woolf's country cottage, and Charleston, home to several members of the Bloomsbury Group, as part of Activities Week in June.

The students soaked up the bohemian atmosphere of Charleston, where the domestic space is a work of art itself. The artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant produced art every day and painted the fireplaces, door panels, tables and the walls which still remain today. If you look closely, you notice that the lampshades are actually collanders, made by Woolf's nephew, Quentin Bell, who grew up at Charleston.

At Monk's House, Year 12 saw Virginia Woolf's writing room (A Room of One's Own), where she wrote the very novel they are studying for A Level, Mrs Dalloway. After the tour, students emulated Woolf by playing boules in the garden, which she played every evening with her husband Leonard, and sat in the garden where the couple entertained visitors such as TS Eliot, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey and Benjamin Britten.