Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant arrived at Charleston in 1916 along with Duncan’s lover David Garnett and Vanessa’s two young sons, Julian and Quentin.

It became the meeting place for radical artists, writers and thinkers known as the Bloomsbury Group. Bell described the house and garden as ‘most lovely, very solid and simple, with … perfectly flat windows and wonderful tiled roofs. The pond is most beautiful, with a willow at one side and a stone or flint wall edging it all round the garden part, and a little lawn sloping down to it, with formal bushes on it.’

The walled garden with its old fruit trees and vegetables was redesigned with the help of the art critic, Roger Fry. Gravel paths were created while the flower-beds were filled with cottage garden plants that Bell would take into her studio to paint. Mosaic pavements were laid and sculptures placed around the garden while the house was ‘full of young people in very high spirits, laughing a great deal at their own jokes… lying about in the gardens which is simply a dithering blaze of flowers and butterflies and apples’ [Vanessa Bell].

In 1918, Vanessa and Duncan’s daughter Angelica was born who later married David Garnett. Angelica described Charleston as an ‘earthly paradise’.

The family continued to rent the house for the next twenty years, spending their summers here along with their friends. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, the couple returned to Charleston, this time with Vanesssa’s husband Clive.

After Duncan’s death in 1978, The Charleston Trust charity was set up to restore and maintain Charleston. The house and garden have been open to visitors since 1986.