From Tudors to postmodernism: a curatorial guide to England. Workshop Houses

Charleston House Museum, East Sussex
Charleston

During the First World War, the Bloomsbury Group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant moved from bustling London to the country estate of Charleston. Almost immediately after moving in, they began hand-painting every available surface in the cottage: walls, fireplaces, doors, tables, bed headboards and bookcases, turning the house itself into a work of art and eliminating any conservative preconceptions about the interior.

Adjoining the labyrinth of small, brightly colored rooms was the large, high-ceilinged studio where Grant worked. Directly from it was access to a walled wild garden designed by the artist Roger Fry. In it, classical sculptures were juxtaposed with life-size works by Quentin Bell.

“The house seems full of young people in very high spirits, laughing at their own jokes … wallowing in the garden, which is just mottled with flowers, butterflies and apples,” wrote Vanessa Bell. Indeed, in the following decades it became a center of attraction for the most progressive artists, writers and thinkers of the XX century, who continued to embody their social and creative ideas in it.

The home and studios of sculptor Henry Moore, Hertfordshire
Henry Moore Studios

British sculptor Henry Moore spent most of his life in the village of Perry Green, despite his worldwide fame. After the artist’s death, his house and several workshops became a museum and foundation that today houses a collection of some 15,000 works, including sculptures, maquettes, drawings, prints, tapestries and textiles.

In addition to the studios, a stunning garden is open to the public, where Moore began exhibiting his work back in the 1950s. The artist firmly believed that art should be accessible to people. The garden was mainly occupied by the sculptor’s wife, Irina Radetskaya from Kiev, who reverently planted bushes and flowers so that they framed the monumental works. And when the area of the garden was no longer sufficient for the exposition of works, the sculptor began to buy up the land around the house – and eventually bought up more than 28 thousand hectares.

Now both the garden and the museum continue to live on, reminding of their owners and receiving guests, just as the artist intended.

Sculptor BarbaraHepworth’s workshop, Cornwall
Barbara Hepworth Museum

For her permanent studio, sculptor Barbara Hepworth chose one of the most picturesque places in Great Britain – the county of Cornwall. In the late 1930s she moved to the coast, and by the late 1940s she occupied a small cottage tucked away in the winding streets of St. Ives, which offers stunning views of the harbor and surrounding countryside.

For more than a quarter of a century, Barbara Hepworth has been creating her work in Cornwall. Now some of them are on display inside the house, some in the light-filled, white-washed studio. And the monumental sculptures are in the tropical garden adjacent to the cottage, which the artist designed herself. She cared reverently for the plants and felt that this was the setting in which her work should be contemplated. “Finding this studio was a kind of magic,” Hepworth wrote. – Here was a studio, a courtyard and a garden where I could work outdoors and in space.”

The house opened to the public a year after the artist’s death, in 1975. Since 1980 it has been managed by the Tate, which has chosen to preserve the works in the environment for which they were created.

The full story on historic houses in England is printed in a special Winter issue of #Englishhomes. You can order your copy by clicking here.