Monks house part I

I have so many photos of this place it’s likely going to stretch over 3 posts to make it manageable. Monks house is a 17th-century weatherboarded cottage owned by Leonard and the novelist Virginia Woolf from 1919, until Leonard's death in 1969. Sadly Virginia, who had suffered from crippling depression most of her life and possibly bipolar drowned herself in the local river in 1941 with a large stone in her pocket, She left a note that she no longer wanted to be a burden to her husband. Leonard went on to live in the property until he died in 1969.

The Woolfs had bought the house for £700 and it was in very poor condition. The floors of the living room were damp, there was no bath and the house was supplied with no water and little heat. They began renovations in 1920 and it took them many years to make the house and garden how they liked it. A two-room building extension allowed for the construction of Virginia’s garden bedroom which I will share in another post and she also had a writing lodge built in the garden. She would work in the lodge every day spending hours every day writing, even on occasion falling asleep there on the summer evenings.