West Dean House

Another wet and miserable day. It's not the wet but the unremitting greyness that gets to me. However, it was a blood test hospital day so we had to take ourselves out. So much flooding.

So today's blip is an old standby which I've talked about before, but never blipped the main building. This is [part of] West Dean College, near Chichester. Another of the large Sussex estates, it has around 6,300 acres of parkland, gardens, farms, orchards etc.

The Estate itself dates back to 1086 and features in the Domesday book. The flint faced manor house was substantially rebuilt [from the original Medieval house] around 1740. It has many turrets and is completely castellated over its vast area.

Edward James, a poet and follower of the Surrealist movement, inherited the Estate from his father and set about forming one of the largest private collections of Surrealist works. When war was on the horizon, in 1939, he feared for the survival of the old crafts, arts and techniques after the war, and decided to set up an educational community where the techniques of craftsmanship could be preserved and taught, old works restored, and new works of art created.

In 1964 James conveyed his Estate, including West Dean House, to the Edward James Foundation. In 1971 the charitable foundation established West Dean College as a centre for the study of conservation, arts, crafts, writing, gardening and music. There are some wonderful facilities here: the Tapestry Studio, the Gallery, the Gardens. I have a special interest in tapestry and was delighted to hear a while back that the Studio was helping with the restoration of Stirling Castle for Historic Scotland, including recreating a 16C tapestry called The Hunt of the Unicorn - the whole being a 12 year project. The Studio also wove a tapestry for Tracy Emin based on her Black Cat painting, which was shown at the Saatchi Gallery last year. Edward James himself was a great patron of the arts, sponsoring Dali and Magritte, publishing Betjman's first book of poems and much more.

Apologies for the length of this blip, I am an enthusiast as you will have gathered:-)



I have seen such beauty as one man has seldom seen;
therefore will I be grateful to die in this little room,
surrounded by the forests, the great green gloom
of trees my only gloom - and the sound, the sound of green.
Here amid the warmth of the rain, what might have been
is resolved into the tenderness of a tall doom
who says: 'You did your best, rest' - and after you the bloom
of what you loved and planted still will whisper what you mean.

Edward James,
Poet 1907 - 1984
West Dean