We go down to the Downs (and the Seaside too)

We have just returned from two perfectly wonderful days in East Sussex. We left on Wednesday morning and drove to Lewes, a town where we have been several times before, but instead of shopping — which is what we have always done on those past visits — this time we decided to enjoy the historic attractions on offer, specifically sites related to Tom Paine. Tom is claimed by both Americans and French as national heroes, but he was British, and they don't actually have all that much use for him, pretty much because of why he is a hero in those two other places. In the US, we all learn about his pamphlet Common Sense, which is always cited as an incitement for the American Revolution; for the French he wrote the Rights of Man to help their Revolution along. But before he became an international superstar of revolution, he was a very minor government official, an excise officer, in Lewes.

He married a local girl whose father owned a tobacco shop, and Tom took over running the shop when his father-in-law died.

The house where Tom lived and ran a tobacco shop

He began his career as a radical rabble rouser in Lewes when he rallied the excise men to demand higher pay. Eventually Tom and his wife separated, and he went off to the American colonies in time to foment revolution.  Tom is becoming a bit more legendary here in England. Last year, we saw a new play 

staged at the Globe Theatre that chronicles his life story. This year Lewes unveiled this statue commemorating Tom on the Fourth of July. Our favourite bear Barley is sitting on Tom's knee comparing notes on walls: Tom breaks them whilst Barley sits on them.

In the afternoon we drove a few miles east of Lewes to visit Charleston Farmhouse in the beautiful South Downs countryside. Charleston was one of the central nodes of Bloomsbury art and life. Vanessa Bell leased the house in 1916, after she separated from her husband Clive Bell, to be close to her sister Virginia Woolf who was living nearby. Vanessa moved in with her two sons Quentin and Julian Bell, the gay man she was in love with, Duncan Grant, and his lover David (Bunny) Garnett. Vanessa gave birth to her daughter Angelica, fathered by Duncan Grant, but surnamed Bell and never told her true paternity until she was an adult, because Vanessa and Clive never divorced, and another surname would have made her an out-of-wedlock child, not a good thing in the Britain of 1918. In 1942, Angelica married Bunny Garnett. And all of them remained at Charleston their whole lives long — except for Angelica, who is still alive living in the South of France, but still returns to Charleston for special occasions. Others also lived at Charleston for a time. Clive Bell moved in with enough money to modernise the facilities. John Maynard Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of Peace at Charleston. He loved the area so much that he bought the neighbouring farmhouse when he married a Russian ballerina, although it was a happy marriage, the snobbish Bloomsberries despised her and cut their connections with Keynes.

Charleston has become very popular, so we were lucky to catch two spaces on the last tour of the day at 5 pm. Fortunately there were many other things to fill the two hours before our tour. First was the small gallery next to the shop where an exhibit of wood cuts by Eric Ravilious was on display. Ravilious has become one of our favourite artists since being introduced to his work several years ago. The motive for this trip is to see a highly praised exhibit in Eastbourne. In his early career he was known primarily as a graphic artist working with wood cuts. The exhibit included book plate designs done for friends, many illustrations done for books back in the day when graphic arts was common in book design, and larger pieces done for adverts or calendars.

The garden at Charleston is not large by English standards, but it is beautiful and exuberant, and filled with Quentin Bell's sculpture and pottery. The drought that has turned everything brown in London has not seemed to affect the South Downs.

With time still before our tour of the house, we drove over to Berwick Church set in a lovely fold of the Downs, where the Charleston artists spent time during the war years of the 1940s, painting the interior of the church with murals.

 

Vanessa and Duncan painted the panels in the lectern. Duncan painted the roundels in the chancel screen. 

Vanessa's  Annunciation with Angelica as Mary.

The idea for painting the church interior came from Bishop Bell of Chichester, one of the great patrons of early 20th century British art, who promoted the idea of reviving the ancient art of decorative painting church walls in his diocese. As it happened, on our way back to London last evening we stopped off to see one of our 1000 Best Churches (#286) in Clayton and were greeted with one of the earliest examples of this art form. St John the Baptist church has an 11th century interior with a Doom Painting — the Last Judgement — that spans the chancel and nave walls, that may well be the forerunner of the popular decoration. The painting was whitewashed at the Reformation, but uncovered during 19th century refurbishment. Recent testing indicates the paint adheres to the first layer of plaster on the walls which dates it to 1080.

The chancel arch

A detail of the central Christ in Majesty

A nave wall border

A detail of an exquisite angel

Back at Charleston, we were escorted around the house to see the rooms painted by Vanessa and Duncan in rooms filled with art. The Bloomsbury style may not be to all tastes, but the exuberance of the decor is so appealing, it is hard not to go home with plans to to paint dots and cross-hatches on every surface. There are no photos allowed in the house of course, but here are a few Google images to illustrate.

This morning we set off for the seaside at Eastbourne to see an exhibiton at the Towner Museum in its new building in Eastbourne's Cultural Quarter as the signs denoted the name of this area of the city where we finally found the museum after a great deal of difficulty. (It is right next to the International Lawn Tennis Centre, if you are looking.) This confusion afforded us an opportunity to move into the 21st century which will make our children proud. We first spent a long time unsuccessfully looking for the park where our outdated atlas said the museum was located. When we admitted defeat on finding either the park or the museum, Bob sat down with his new Smart-Phone, discovered the Towner's new and correct location, found our location, and then got a rough idea how to get from here to there.

The exhibition was fantastic, entitled Familiar Visions — Eric and James Ravilious: Father and Son.  Eric Ravilious was raised in Eastbourne and used the South Downs landscape for much of his work. This show was primarily devoted to his watercolours. Yesterday's woodcuts at Charleston were on loan from the Towner's extensive collection of Ravilious's work. His career was tragically short. From his training at the Royal Academy until the outbreak of the war in 1939, he was a successful commercial artist. He immediately applied to become an Official War Artist, and in 1942, when he was accompanying a flying rescue crew looking for a downed Allied plane in Iceland, his plane was lost and never recovered. He was only 39 years old. We first saw the war art in an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum and instantly became fans of his work.

War art

The show at the Towner juxtaposes Eric's watercolours of the Downs with his son James's photographs of the community where he lived in Devon. James was a toddler when his father died, so he never knew his father. James died a few years ago at the young age of 60 leaving a huge archive of photos.

The Father's Sussex landscape

The Son's Devon Landscape

Eastbourne is what I would call a Redundant Cultural Landscape.  An English seaside resort with a Grand Promenade facing the English Channel lined with perhaps thousands of hotel rooms which were once filled with joyous guests celebrating their annual week's holiday at the seaside. Well the domestic seaside holiday died 30 years ago with the cheap package tour to the Costa Brava, and we are familiar with the sniggers evoked by staycations. 

Here is Bob with the Eastbourne Pier behind him.

Oh look, he's not alone. There is the family huddled together wearing sweaters on the pebble beach whilst enjoying the English summer.

What's a redundant landscape to do? Eastbourne, like the other Channel resorts, has become a popular retirement centre, and as retirees live longer and are more active, I think Eastbourne is building theatres and museums and leisure facilities to attract the sort of residents they want. They certainly don't want tourists judging from the number of direction signs and promotional brochures we didn't see. I think this is quite a good strategy for a community to follow for a stable future in the decades ahead.

We also stopped at the local military museum, housed in a Redoubt built to defend against an invasion by Napoleon, because they advertised that Ravilious's war art could be seen, but it turned out to be images from the Imperial War Museum collection. Nevertheless, the museum had an interesting display about the local Sussex regiments commemorated who were at the Charge of the Light Brigade, Khartoum, El Alamein, and Monte Cassino. Eastbourne's own wartime history was devastating, taking more direct hits than any other coastal community, because the German bombers could get in and out before any RAF fighter defenses could be raised.

There was one more stop on the way back to London at the village of Ditchling where Eric Gill and others associated with William Morris's Arts and Crafts guild set up a commune in the 1920s. The charming local museum has a beautiful collection and interesting displays about the assorted artists and artisans who came to live and work in Ditchling.

The garden at the Ditchling Museum

We had very little time to explore, but Ditchling is on the list of places to return to the next time we make the trek to the South Coast.