Literary Trails of the South Coast

We continue south to Portsmouth, for a visit to the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum, whose rooms take us on a journey not just into the birth, life and death of the great author, but through lifestyles and preferences of people at the time. A great deal of hard work, effort and insight went into decorating the house to the Regency style favoured by the middle classes of the time. A previous Curator of Art for Portsmouth Museums carefully examined the layers of wallpaper and paint inside the home, ahead of the plaster being stripped off, to identify the paint colours or types of papers used in the original decorations. This meant that any replacement interior finishes could be carefully matched to these originals. The rooms include the parlour, the dining room and the bedroom, in which Dickens was born in 1812. There is also an extensive collection of memorabilia associated with the author, the most important of which is the couch on which Dickens took his last breath at Gad’s Hill in 1870.

Later in the afternoon we call in at Winchester for a visit to the magnificent Cathedral. In the course of our guided tour we will see the grave of Jane Austen, who was buried here in 1817. We will also see the memorial plaque erected by her nephew in 1870 and a memorial window paid for by public subscription in 1900, by which time Jane had attained the fame and critical acclaim she never knew in her lifetime.

We will also take a walk though the Cathedral Close and follow briefly in the footsteps of the celebrated  English Romantic poet, John Keats, who stayed in Winchester during the late summer and early autumn of 1819 and passed through here on his daily walk.

This morning after breakfast, we check out of the hotel and travel into Sussex on the trail of our final two literary greats.

Monk’s House is a tranquil 16th-century weather boarded cottage inhabited by Leonard and the novelist Virginia Woolf from 1919 until Leonard's death in 1969. Full of their favourite things, the house appears as if they just stepped out for a walk and shines a light not just on the life and work of Virginia but on the wider ‘Bloomsbury Group’ and the many artists, writers and thinkers who visited. The walls and furnishings are covered in artwork by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, added to later on by Trekkie Ritchie. The Woolfs bought Monk's House for the 'shape and fertility and wildness of the garden' and today, the lovely cottage garden contains a mix of flowers, vegetables, orchards, lawns and ponds. All in all a most interesting visit, with nothing to be afraid of…

We continue to Bateman’s in Burwash, East Sussex, the Jacobean house which was the home of Rudyard Kipling from 1902-1936. 'That's She! The Only She! Make an honest woman of her - quick!' was how Rudyard Kipling and his wife, Carrie, felt the first time they saw Bateman's. Surrounded by the wooded landscape of the Sussex Weald, this 17th-century house, with its mullioned windows and oak beams, provided a much needed sanctuary to this world-famous writer and inspired his work. The rooms, described by him as 'untouched and unfaked', remain much as he left them, with oriental rugs and artefacts reflecting his strong association with the East. Kipling wrote Puck of Pook’s Hill and Rewards and Fairies, which includes the poem ‘If,’ at Bateman's. He also designed many of the existing features of the elegant garden himself, with a collection of roses, wild flowers and herbs and a watermill. The place has the air of a quintessential English garden, as might have been dreamt of by homesick men in India.

In the late afternoon we return to our drop-off points in London, where the group will disperse or make onward connections.