A sun-soaked Saturday at Charleston Festival through the eyes of Jamison Kent. Photography authors own.
Charleston House is the former hangout spot and place of residence for members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry and Clive Bell. Their cigarette butts are still in the fireplace. Comprised of a farmhouse, studio, garden, orchard and gallery space, Charleston is now open to the public as a year-round host of exhibitions and events that sit pretty at the intersection of art, academia, politics and literature.
Saturday morning, 9:54 am train from London Victoria to Lewes with Ella Slater. Staving off my two-day hangover with a canned latte, yoghurt and banana from M&S. Both Ella and Elephant’s very own editor, Emily Burke’s, 10-year plan include a move from East London to Lewes. I’m intrigued, but not yet convinced.
As the train pulls into the almost coastal town, the sky is blue with tentative clouds inching their way overhead. Our cartoon-character-levels-of-darling bus driver greets us with a “let’s get a ring-a-long, shall we?” He shuttles us to where the house is located in Firle. We are welcomed by a field of lounging cows warning us of the forthcoming showers.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting of Charleston and the subsequent festival, but it’s quaint and intimate. Ella and I are on the younger side of the average age of attendees. Due to poor time management on my end, we have two hours or so until our first session. We grab a drink in the barnhouse-style cafe, wander around the garden and await our entry slot into the house.
Statues, busts and tiles are dotted throughout the garden, which was redesigned in 1918 by art critic Roger Fry. Bell and Grant planted flowers that they loved to paint. Magenta foxgloves—Tinkerbell’s choice accommodation—line the gravel paths.
A pair of what look like Charleston regulars relax by the pond with their four-legged friends and a picnic. They are like Marcel Dyf’s Two Sisters with weatherproof jackets instead of straw hats. Every direction I look, a painting is dying to be made. Not so surprisingly, the house and garden were designed to feel as though one was stepping into a painting. Despite having no prospects, I frequently tell Ella how perfect a wedding venue this would make.
The house is astonishing and perfect in every way. This is what I imagine Anthropologie thinks it looks like. Every and any surface was Vanessa Bell’s canvas—desks, wall skirting, and the underside of the fireplace only visible to a child or a very short person.
The bookshelves are treasure troves as I sift through the spines for font inspiration and more titles to add to my reading list. Copies of Apollo, exhibition catalogues and Punch pocketbooks abound.
Heroes of literary and art history are memorialised in boxes of Charbonnel et Walker chocolates, expired tubes of paint and children’s paintings taped to the mantel. The art collection, curated by the rotating door of residents, includes a stunning Pierre Roy painting gifted to Roger Fry after a studio visit and Duncan Grant’s tender portrait of economist and former partner John Maynard Keynes.
The house tour concludes in Bell and Grant’s studio. Soda water, vodka and whisky on offer at their makeshift bar counter—Bell was definitely a vodka, soda and lime girl. Her desk looks out onto the garden, her straw hat seemingly right where she left it.
Our first session was Clive Myrie, Robin Ince and Katie Razzall discussing “In Defence of a Free Press.” Timely, no? All three work at, or have formerly worked for, the BBC — Ince resigned last year. Myrie mentioned that the CPJ reported that 2025 was the deadliest year ever for journalists; Ince clarified that 70% of them were killed by the Israeli government. During the audience Q&A portion, a woman says she wishes we could have heard more from Ince since he was so “loquacious”. I’d have to agree. It’s a shame Celebrity Traitors is on the BBC because Ince would be a perfect contestant.
Following a quick lunch break, we returned to the tent for our second session with Reni Eddo-Lodge, Alice Oswald and Ahdaf Soueif on “A Matter of Conscience”. They each wrote a commission in response to the question: what does it mean to write and act from conscience? Alice Oswald’s piece ends with: “At this point, if the poet does not protest she will lose her job.” Eddo-Lodge periodically reapplies her lip gloss on stage, as if punctuating her wonderful insights.
We skip the third session after Deborah Levy was replaced last minute with men talking about memoir. Instead, we explored the Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press exhibition in the gallery space. As a modern literature researcher, I’m sick to my stomach over being in the same room as an original Hogarth Press copy of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land—hand-typeset by Woolf herself, with fewer than 500 copies made. Other highlights include John Banting’s cover design for Christopher Isherwood’s Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Vanessa Bell’s illustrations in Woolf’s Kew Gardens (1919).
After a north-London-priced glass of wine, we make our way back to the tent for our final session: art historian and writer Katy Hessel and curator Jon King discussing the topic “Art is for Everyone”.
Hessel looks like a country-pop princess in a cow-print power suit, expertly answering questions with podcast-host precision. She remarks that “accessibility and seriousness can co-exist”, a simple idea that tends to get lost in debates around the pretentious nature of art.
We barely make our train back to London. Ella promptly dozes off and I research the incentious nature of the Bloomsbury group and scroll on Vinted. My new Alice Oswald book sits patiently in my tote bag.
