Monk's House, Rodmell

A couple of weeks ago, in early April, I visited Monk's House in Rodmell, near Lewes (incidentally one of my favourite towns). The home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, and the house from which Woolf walked to take her own life in the nearby river in 1941, it seems haunted by their presence. Particularly striking to me was Woolf's bedroom, immaculately preserved, with her complete selection of Shakespeare on the bookshelf. She had painstakingly painted and covered each of these, and written the titles on. I'm not sure I've ever visited a house that felt so haunted by memories. It's also worth a visit to see the writing room in the garden - accompanied by photographs of everyone from Eliot to Forster visiting - and to view the paintings and furniture, all decorated by members of the Bloomsbury Group. It was a wonderful, if slightly chilling, experience - and a visit I'd been planning to make for ages. The picture below is of the beautiful walled garden...