Lewes; Saturday, 25 September, 2021

Whilst I didn’t have much booked in for the day the less than convenient timings of rural buses in East Sussex meant that I had to have an early start to the day, so I was down at breakfast shortly after 8am and then shortly after 9 heading out of the hotel and over to the station to catch the train down to Newhaven.

The light mist that was floating around in Lewes had been replaced with a full on sea-mist by the time I’d made it out to Newhaven, albeit a very short one as you could pretty much see the edge of the cloud bank not that far out to sea, but it did mean it was a slightly damp walk through Newhaven and down the path running alongside the River Ouse to the mouth of the river and, on a chalk ridge above it, Newhaven Fort.

There has been some sort of fortification on the site since at least Roman times, and evidence suggesting further back than that, though the current construction is from the early Victorian era, and it’s an impressive construction – not least of all for how little of it is visible. The architect took advantage of the chalk cliffs to bury most of the site into the hills, there is very little to show from outside the size of the complex, which includes a deep dry moat that has hidden tunnels underneath it to allow soldiers to head under the moat and up into shooting galleries on the opposite side of the moat creating a lethal chasm – or at least it would have been lethal if the site had ever actually seen any action, but by the time it was built the threat from Napoleon III had receded, with the now deposed emperor living out a retirement in Kent. By the time the next threat came along a fort completely hidden from the sea isn’t much use when it’s totally visible from the air.

I spent quite a bit of time looking round the fort and the various exhibitions, before it was time to head back down into Newhaven to catch the bus onto my next stop. In the end it turned out that I could probably have spent another 30 minutes up at the fort and I would still have made the bus.

On the day I was visiting the country was in the grip of panic buying of petrol as a shortage of tanker drivers had caused one or two petrol stations to temporarily run dry which had then sparked a run on petrol. With queues backing out of every petrol forecourt on the south coast the narrow roads of Newhaven town centre, and the coast road in general, were horrifically snarled up and a journey that should have taken less than 15 minutes ended up taking over an hour.

Eventually I made it the couple of miles up the road to the very small village of Rodmell. Located halfway between Lewes and Newhaven, Rodmell is home to Monk’s house – a 15th century house. That’s not particularly special as the whole village is made up of some pretty old buildings, it is after all a small Sussex village that’s been unspoilt for generations. What set’s Monk’s house apart is one of its residents at the start of the 20th Century.

With her mental health suffering, but her literary fame rising, Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard purchased Monk’s house originally as a holiday home, but eventually moved down here full time and where Virginia continued to write from, using both a room built in the garden and her bedroom, built as an annex onto the main house.

Sadly, Virginia’s mental health continued to suffer and in March 1941 she walked down to the nearby river Ouse and drowned herself. Following her cremation her ashes were buried under an elm tree in the gardens of the house, and her husband continue to live there until his death in 1969. In 1972 the house was sold to the University of Sussex who eventually passed it over to the National Trust.

The house has been kept in the same condition it would have been in when Virginia and Leonard were living there, and the gardens have been restored to how they were when Leonard laid them out. Today you can visit the house and be guided round the rooms by the National Trust volunteers, before taking a wander through the large gardens, and take in the views of the South Downs from their large lawn.

Having looked round the house and gardens I had some time before my bus was due – if it had been running to time, and close to an hour with the delay it was currently suffering (at least the bus company had a real time app that I could check that on), so I popped into the pub at the top of the village for a pint, returning to the bus stop as the tracker showed the bus a couple of minute away and caught it back into Lewes. I popped back to the hotel to freshen up before popping out for an early dinner and then an early night.