Spirit of Place

Far Horizons

The other day, on my Thames Path Walk, I stopped briefly at Kelmscott Manor, the summer home for many years of William Morris and his entourage. 

Kelmscott Manor

It is a peaceful place, its old stones and leaded windows giving it a dignity that is then gently upheld by the unpretentious gardens.

In keeping with the charitable aim of my walk, I remember the visit here in 2013 that I made with my wife, Amanda.

Amanda was fond of the designs that Morris, Burne-Jones, Webb and Rossetti produced under the general umbrella of the Arts and Crafts movement.  

But perhaps I was more interested in the collective efforts, the dynamic of such groups of people who shared ideas and thoughts and inspired art that was essentially something to be lived with..... 

Red House, Bexley heath

I may be wrong [You often are.... Ed] but I have found visiting the homes of writers and artists (too many to mention, but for example, W B Yeats's Thoor Ballylee, Dylan Thomas's Boat House, Hardy's Cottage, Shaw's Corner and Henry Moore's Perry Green, T E Lawrence's Clouds Hill and New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon..... As well places abroad such as Thomas Mann's Buddenbrookhaus in Lübeck or Leopardi's House in Recanati.... [As you said, too many to mention.... Ed].....  Yes, I have found that visiting the homes of artists, writers and musicians (Elgar's, Britten's, Palestrina's.... I could go on [You do.  Ed]) gives me more of an idea of their lives and inspiration that any amount of academic research, [Lightweight!  Ed].

Kelmscott House, Hammersmith

William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow

But this, however, is/was merely a preamble to the recent trip we made to Sussex, to follow up an exhibition of the work of Lee Miller at The Tate....

My point is, perhaps [You don't know?  Ed] that open communities of people with similar interests can be very fertile ground for developing ideas.  It is true that some artists and writers work best in isolation (and need much undisturbed time to get to grips with their creations) but, I think, it is rare that such people don't also enjoy conversation and socialisation and contact with others.  An example might be Joyce in Paris, where he would work scrupulously through the mornings, but then frequent Les Deux Magots, or such haunts, for white wine (which he called electricity) and company later in the day.

However, before we track down Lee Miller at Farleys, we visit Charleston, which in 1916 became the home of Vanessa Bell with her friend and lover Duncan Grant (and his partner David Garnett), who, as conscientious objectors, sought farm work and a place out of London.

Charleston in Firle, East Sussex

They never bought the 16th century farmhouse, but rented it continuously until Grant's death in 1978 (Vanessa Bell died in 1961).  In between the wars they returned to London, but used it as a retreat and holiday home.  At the start of the Second World War they returned here permanently.

The Bloomsbury Group, which included Vanessa's sister Virginia Woolf, as well as the artist Roger Fry, frequently met here and it would have been buzzing with experimental thinking and alternative ideas. My late friend, the novelist Simon Mawer, was fascinated by the life of the place and was working on a novel set here when he died prematurely last year.

Right from the start, Bell and Grant decorated every room with their art work - not just paintings, but also textiles, ceramics and furniture.  Now preserved by the Charleston Trust it is today a place where visitors may appreciate the ambience as it was but may also enjoy exhibitions or take part in a year-round calendar of festivals and events.

The studio is especially interesting - though it was an add-on and is in need of repair now. It has a real sense of being lived in and used, and it is almost as if it is only temporarily without a practising artist.....

Outside, the gardens are another work of art, with a naturalness that goes well with the informality of the house.

Anyway, after a breath of air and some wonderful views from nearby 217 metre high Firle Beacon:

Looking north from Firle Beacon - Charleston is off to the right

The horizon stretches beyond our vision, teasing the imagination, befuddling the focus - we head to Farleys Farm.....

Farleys House, Muddles Green, Chiidingly, East Sussex

As the website for Farleys House & Gallery (Home of the Surrealists) says, The exterior of Farleys House gives no hint of the visual excitements to be discovered within. You will find brightly coloured walls, rambling corridors and generously proportioned oddly asymmetric rooms filled with a remarkable and eclectic collection of artworks, all of which provides the visitor with a glimpse into the remarkable lives of its former occupants Lee Miller and Roland Penrose.

Farleys House, Muddles Green, East Sussex

All of the above is true, though you can only visit the ground floor, and photography is prohibited, so I cannot share with you the variety of exhibits nor the range of rooms, from Lee Miller's custom-built kitchen (towards the end of her life she became a cordon bleu chef) to her own book-lined study, but, thanks to the Farleys Team, this is the Dining Room, a part of the original farmhouse,

Fireplace, Farleys House, East Sussex, England by Tony Tree (j13a)

Tony Tree © Lee Miller Archives, England 2026. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk

and this is a corner of the sitting room:

Sitting Room Farleys House, East Sussex, England by Jim Holden (JH 0278)

Jim Holden © Lee Miller Archives, England 2026. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk

The tour is fascinating - but the legacies of Lee Miller, one of the twentieth century's most remarkable photographers (she was, among many other things, a brilliant fashion photographer in New York but then also an extraordinarily tenacious and risk-taking war photographer in the Second World War, capturing the fall of Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Berchtesgaden, and being amongst the first to enter the concentration camp at Dachau) and that of her husband Roland Penrose, an artist in his own right, but also founder of the ICA and biographer of Picasso..... These are closely guarded and, with reason, so are the art works within the house.

And the gardens, including Lee's own herb garden, are a treat.....

And within sight of the Long Man of Wilmington on the northern slope of Windover Hill, there are some interesting exhibits which I was allowed to photograph....

Including this Sea Creature, the creation of Antony Penrose, the son of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, who is still resident at the Farm.

Sea Creature, 2000, Oak and Lead, Antony Penrose

It was a delight to meet Antony, whose books about his mother include The Lives of Lee Miller:

  Lee Miller's War:

and Lee Miller: Photographs:

Antony was charming and welcoming and clearly loves the interest people are taking in his family and his home.  I am very grateful to him for granting me permission to use these snapshots:

Antony Penrose

I don't think I am misrepresenting history by saying that the relationship between Lee and her son could have been better during his childhood, but then not everyone's mother can be described as: Photojournalist, war correspondent, model and Surrealist muse.... one of the most important women photographers of the twentieth century.....  And not only that, when you read about her life, particularly during the war and immediately afterwards, it is exhausting just to read about it!  Imagine what it must have been like to live it? Not many could have stood that pace, that stress, that pressure. And then to marry and have a child?  Settling down can not have been straightforward.

Tony was born in London in 1947, but in 1949 they all moved to Farleys, where he grew up largely supervised by Patsy Murray, the daughter of Lee and Roland's housekeeper and cook. While the house was often alive with famous guests (Picasso visited twice, but friends and connections included a Who's Who of contemporary artists) it wasn't until he was an adolescent that he grew to know Lee better. In the sixties, as he describes in The Lives of Lee Miller, things began to improve: he had escaped from school and home early and after some years in engineering found he missed the cows and the land too much, so began to study farming. Absence from from home for long periods while he worked on other people's farms  helped heal the breaches. Gradually he and Lee became more tolerant of each other.  Whenever he brought friends home, Lee was as welcoming and hospitable to them as she was to her own guests.....

Antony Penrose

Then, in 1971, Tony embarked on a three year round-the-world trip, returning in late 1974 with his New Zealand born wife, Suzanna, and setting up home and starting his own family nearby. Sadly, however, despite the new-found closeness, Lee was diagnosed with cancer, and she died on July 21st, 1977.

*****

Ours was an inspiring trip, in a lovely part of this world.  I feel I understand Lee Miller a little better for the visit, and, when subsequently we called in at the 18th century Six Bells Pub in Chiddingly, where Lee had taken Vogue models  as well as guests such as Picasso, Man Ray and Max Ernst, I felt even more as if she was still around. The pub is a friendly delight and really has not changed much over the years. It was almost as though time had paused, and something rare was in the air.....

The weather was perfect, and afterwards we walked on the South Downs Way, near the Seven Sisters, with the land, sea and sky all distinct but interacting, each an important part of the view, contributing to something both awe-inspiring and at the same time harmonious.  It was not hard to imagine how it was once, and how it may be again.....  My horizons have been extended, I think.....

I like the phrase Spirit of Place (genius loci) - which Lawrence Durrell used as a title for some essays and letters about places he loved in Greece and the Aegean. It refers to the character of a location and melds the physical features of a place with its cultural aspects and human connections. Here, at Charleston and then at Farleys, though I cannot pretend to know much about the people who came and went through these spaces (John Maynard Keynes? OK, I should know, but it's all a blank.....) I feel the frisson of an imaginative world, and come away feeling somehow the better for it......

*****

For more details about Charleston please see:

https://www.charleston.org.uk/house/

and for more about Farleys this is the link:

https://www.farleyshouseandgallery.co.uk/farleys-house/

And should you like this and would like to know  more about William Morris, please see my earlier piece at:

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2013/06/feeling-william-morr-ish.html

*****

With very many thanks to my autista and compagna.

*****

The South Downs Way

What is this life? 

Leisure

WHAT is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?—

No time to stand beneath the boughs,

And stare as long as sheep and cows:

W H Davies

I have been away.  Wandering the hills of my past.

And while I was away, Amanda had two cheques returned as she had changed the dates from 2016 to 2017 without initialling the changes and the bank had rejected them.  I tried to explain that all she had to do was to write her initials by the changes and return the cheques.  But this was hard for her to understand.  As I repeatedly tried to explain, show, clarify, demonstrate, elucidate, unravel and decode the simple addition of a signature or initials to each cheque next to the offending correction, she, and I, became increasingly frustrated, which rather spoiled our morning…..

This, sadly, is what dementia does.

This, sadly, is why I have been away, as in my absence I have walked the 100 mile South Downs Way, from Winchester to Eastbourne - which includes  4,150 metres (13,620 feet) of ascent and descent (not including leaving the way to find accommodation or sustenance).  And I have walked this way, in the company of Ken, my Glaswegian friend and pace-setter, as a challenge to inspire friends and others to contribute to Alzheimer’s Society, to fund research into the various forms of dementia (including frontotemporal  https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/info/20007/types_of_dementia/11/frontotemporal_dementia which affects Amanda in the form of semantic dementia).  And, to make it a challenge worth supporting, or so I was advised, we did this in 5 days.

The norm, is, according to many reliable sources, ten to twelve walking days, which makes a lot of sense, as then you would have leisure to appreciate the scenery, to duck the storms, to lunch in rustic pub gardens, visit friends along the route and explore the villages, churches and castles that lie so temptingly near the feet of these rolling hills.

Alas, five days means no time to stop and stare.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

We stayed Sunday night in Winchester, hard by the house where Jane Austen died.  I hoped this was not an omen, and when the chef did not appear to cook breakfast at the Wykeham Arms I breathed more easily, suspecting we had been spared for the moment.  

Then,  having whispered a prayer in the glorious Cathedral,

and raised our swords to mighty King Alfred, we set off.

The first day’s walking took us out across the streaming M3 and into rural Hampshire.  We passed through the village of Exton and then climbed Old Winchester Hill, which is topped by a magnificent Iron Age fort and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest.  It was breezy and fine, and the views southwards towards my birthplace at Portsmouth were breathtaking.

We then dropped down and left the trail to find our first night’s accommodation which was just out of the picturesque village of East Meon.  We dined at Ye Olde George Inn, and, as our hostess was unwell we breakfasted there as well, which was lovely, and then rejoined the way.

Up on the chalk downs there is a real sense of being away from it all.  From some of the highest viewpoints there are views of distant conurbations, such as Worthing, Brighton, and Newhaven, but much of the time we are enveloped in the English countryside, mostly tilled and trimmed by centuries of agriculture, though there are also woodlands and open grassy areas. 

For about ten thousand years people have travelled these paths, and in places have left their traces in burial mounds or fortified enclosures.  Villages have ancient churches, some with Saxon or Norman origins; ruined castles, such as that at Bramber, and timber frame farmhouses, hold stories of the changes of our social and political past.

Unfortunately we have no time to stand and stare, so all the landscape and human endeavour and natural beauty and local interest begins to blur as we tread on, mile after mile, marching left, right, left, right, left…… left, and then skipping to the deuced rhythm of I had a good job when I left, but it served me jolly well right!  that I learned from Mary on the roads near Little Weighton.  The surface is dry, and hard, and feet and legs start to resist and react, though, fortunately, neither of us blister or cramp….

Night follows day; the thrush whistles out the light, and the robin starts us off again.  Day follows day.  Mile after mile.  I think of Harold’s army, trudging south to Pevensey from their northern actions, when the 200 miles between London and York or vice versa usually took two weeks;  in 1066 the Saxons managed 22 to 25 miles a day on the way to Stamford Bridge and then, having withstood Harald Hardrada, they had to return to face William of Normandy…..

Though the way is quiet at this time of year, and we find immense bubbles of time when we are alone but for the sharp reprimands of birds who wish us away, we do meet fellow travellers.  Some, in flashes of youthful energy, or attempts to reclaim such, speed past, their lycra shimmering against the natural dyes of the hedgerows.  Others, like Frank, sprawl comfortably on a bank to rest the feet, while attempting to phone ahead for a camp site. 

Frank - at ease with sore feet and a forty pound pack.

Everywhere, everyone, is kindness.  We hear no talk of elections, nor referenda.  When hosts and fellow walkers alike find we are walking for charity, their instinct is to donate. 

Rebecca and Lesley, at Ditchling Beacon

We swap tales with hosts and companions, and at times enlist the support of sundry walkers to snap our tee shirts. 

Chris, from Kew.  Walking in absentia.

Chris, who is free to roam the national trails in his mid seventies since his beloved wife died of cancer four years ago, warns us of the ups and downs of the seven sisters.  

Andrew - at one with the landscape.

Andrew, whose roots lie in the local chalk, has been exercising on these hills all his life. 

Anna - the key to the future.

Anna, who is scouting for locations for commercial shoots frames us against a view of Eastbourne, such as my mother might recognise from the war, were it not for the carbuncular block of flats between us and the pier.

The way has touched a few historical nerves for me.  The distant sight of Portsmouth, not only reminds me of the days when as a child I watched Russian ships docking from our High Street flat, but also recalls our wedding, when Amanda and I visited David, the then Dean of Portsmouth, to finalise arrangements.  Later on signposts for Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill take me back to my father’s parents, and their haunts.  At the end of the trail we are not far from where my mother’s mother lived at the start of the war, and where my mother served in the WAAF, in mission control, plotting the whereabouts of Bomber Command.

And, poignantly, we reach Beachy Head with helicopters and emergency services in peak action, scouring the sea at the shoreline, and driving iron stakes into the cliff top to secure abseil ropes.  It was here a little less than twenty years ago that my little cousin Isobel found her peace, and all the activity is something of a shock after the days of quiet walking.  A paramedic asks if I am all right, a kind but somehow bittersweet enquiry.  I stumble over Edgar’s words to his blinded father in Act 4, scene 6, of King Lear:

Come on, sir; here's the place: stand still. How fearful

And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

Show scarce so gross as beetles…..

And he concludes, as I would:

I'll look no more;

Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight

Topple down headlong.

More recently Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy commemorated this place neatly in White Cliffs:

Worth their salt, England's white cliffs;

And rounded her ode with:

in painting, poem, play, in song;

something fair and strong implied in

chalk,

what we might wish ourselves.

Stretched, strained, cramped and stiff we pass on and reach the 100^th milestone at the edge of town.  A pint of Harvey’s Best in the busy Pilot Inn, and then a lift to our resting place, and we enter our recovery period. 

Back to civilisation - the view of Eastbourne Pier from our hotel window.....

With the joy of retrospect it has been a wonderful walk.  A hundred miles of the best of England’s chalk lands, hills blest with lark song and butterfly dust.  And, with the ever-surprising support of friends and acquaintances from the now and the then (even some of my students from forty or so years ago!) we have been walking at a rate of at least £40 per mile, totally over £4,000, (and perhaps yet more?) raised in support of Alzheimer’s Society.

Thank you Ken, for your patience and pace.  Thank you Penny for seeing us to the start and collecting us at the finish.  Thank you all who have contributed to the funds which I hope may eventually result in managing or even curing this strange blight on our minds we call dementia.

And thank you Amanda for everything:

Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,

But yet in love he sought me,

And on his shoulder gently laid,

And home, rejoicing, brought me.

Psalm 23

I am home now, resting and recovering.  It was a challenge, but it was great.  I loved the open skies and grassy folds.  It was really worth it.

This trek was organised by Paul Allshire of Discovery Walking, to whom we also owe much gratitude, at  www.southdownsdiscovery.com

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

W H Davies

And, having read this piece, should you wish to contribute to Alzheimer’s Society,

please go to:

www.justgiving.com/Richard-GIBBS5

In Memoriam

Isobel Alice Olivia Baker

1964 - 1998