Laura Hackett in The Sunday Times:
When Sylvia Townsend Warner expressed an interest in a cottage in East Chaldon, Dorset, in 1930, the surveyor described it as “a small undesirable property, situated in an out of the way place and with no attractions whatever”. Today, one imagines, the cottage, which had no electricity or running water, would be described as “bursting with potential”. Undeterred, Townsend Warner bought it for £90. In escaping London she was following the example of her novel Lolly Willowes, in which an unmarried woman moves to the countryside and becomes a witch. Virginia Woolf once asked her how she knew so much about witches. “Because I am one,” Townsend Warner replied.
Woolf moved to the countryside herself, to Asheham House, near Lewes in East Sussex, in 1915. And so did Rosamond Lehmann, the author of the scandalous Dusty Answer, in 1941 — her idyll of choice was the Berkshire village of Aldworth. All three women had gone through upheavals: Woolf was recovering from a suicide attempt, Townsend Warner had ended a long relationship and Lehmann had separated from her husband. Rural England offered rest and retreat.
More here.
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