“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she’s to write fiction,” wrote Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own, which was published in 1929. Ever since, the idea of a creative needing their own demarcated space has stuck fiercely in the popular conscious, so much so that for some, not having one proves a mental block. Add in the Covid-caused shift to either full-time working from home, or a hybrid approach, and a home office has become perceived as an essential; we’ve heard of house moves happening in pursuit of their acquisition and know of a slew of gardens now dominated by oversized sheds. But – bearing in mind that Thomas Hardy wrote five novels including Far From the Madding Crowd in the childhood bedroom he shared with his brother – is ‘a room of one’s own’ truly as vital as we’ve been led to believe? Can there even be advantages to a different approach? And might it be liberating to know that we don’t have to find square footage – or full-time summer holiday childcare – in order to facilitate the existence of this elusive chamber of creation?
Let’s first address that issue of the room itself – for it can be a surprisingly expensive addition, whether it’s a room within a house (how many us of have excess – or can afford them?) or an office in the garden requiring foundations, electrics, and possible party-wall agreements (you should also be aware that too-large a garden office in too-small a garden can prove a hindrance when, later, you might try to sell your house.) Notable is that Jane Austen practiced a somewhat peripatetic style of working, which involved moving a table that measured 47cm across from window to window, and outside when the weather was good enough. A MacBook – which has roughly the same diameter as that table – is equally transportable, to whichever room seems most inviting at the time. And it can leave the house, so that a temporary office might be found in a café, a train carriage, or even the Reading Room of the London Library where numerous authors – Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, EM Forster, Antonia Fraser – have worked (interestingly it was opened by Virginia Woolf’s father, Leslie Stephen.)
For a room of one’s own doesn’t necessarily suit everybody. Sure, there are those who are noise sensitive, which include Virginia Woolf; she had a writing lodge in her garden at Monk’s House, but her husband Leonard stored apples in the loft and the noise he made sorting them out irritated her, and the dog would scratch and that would irritate her too. I, on the other hand, sink into a depression without the noise of life happening around me, and the implication of companionship it brings. Then there’s the inspiration that can come from another person: Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell, shared her studio at Charleston Farmhouse with Duncan Grant – theirs was a creative partnership that lasted fifty years. Five miles or so down the road, decorative painter Tess Newall and her husband the furniture designer Alfred Newall work in joined studios, each surrounded by their team; “Alfred often comes to sit at my desk to chat through ideas, and we are currently designing a collection together,” says Tess (who reckons the answer to occasionally needing to tune out is “noise cancelling head phones.”)
It's true that children aren’t necessarily a creative accoutrement – and I write this accompanied by two, who are variously doing very repetitive piano practice and shouting at the sewing machine (“why won’t you thread you stupid needle?!”) I used to find the combination of work and children quite soul-destroying, until I found out about the artist Barbara Hepworth’s war-time circumstances. In 1939 she, Ben Nicholson, their five-year old triplets and Barbara’s ten-year-old from her first marriage were renting a house in Carbis Bay, next to St. Ives, where Hepworth was in charge of domestic arrangements. “I’ve slowly discovered how to create for 30 mins, cook for 40 mins, create for another 30 and look after children for 50 and so on through the day,” she wrote to a friend. “Working with children and having a full house around me has always been my reality,” says textile designer Cathy Nordstrom, who explains that, when they were little, she always tried to involve them as best she could. “For instance, if I was drawing and sketching, I cleared the dining table and pulled out all the pens and papers we had.” The designer Alexandra Robinson does similar, cutting up paintings by her children in order to turn them into collages. “I love having them in the studio working alongside me,” she says. “They like to copy what I am doing but actually it is them that I am constantly inspired by.” And, juggling writing with work and childcare “has taught me not to be precious about where and how I write,” says Joanna Quinn, author of the bestselling country house saga The Whalebone Theatre (which was my favourite work of fiction of 2022). “Writing is a bit like exercise: once you get started you’ll (usually) enjoy it.”
To return to Virginia Woolf and her writing, I am aware that A Room of One’s Own was less concerned with the details of a home office than it was with social injustice, historical links between poverty and low achievement, and the marginalisation of women in literature – and I don’t want to dismiss those. I’m also aware that while Thomas Hardy was writing those novels in his childhood bedroom, he probably wasn’t having to think about what to give everybody for supper – and certainly one of the struggles of not having a room of your own is lack of headspace, and thus ability to organise. The designer Tori Murphy recounts a period during which “the only place I found solitude was by opening the door of the washing machine, balancing my laptop on a couple of books, and perching on a stool, my feet resting inside the drum. I had my back to chaos and a clear blank wall in front of me.” What is also essential, advises Juliette Byrne, is to have storage space for the accoutrements of office life – the printer, the files, and everything else. “We’ve created pull-down cupboards in kitchens for them, with integrated desks too,” she says, suggesting that a landing, or the space under the stairs can work equally well.
All that said, a home office can be a wonderful thing – and a room of extraordinary beauty; witness Vita Sackville West’s writing tower in the Elizabethan Tower at Sissinghurst, and Alexandra Tolstoy’s home office in the garden of her cottage in Oxfordshire. Worth knowing is that Vanessa Bell eventually moved out of the studio she shared with Duncan Grant, and into her own room in the attic, while Barbara Hepworth’s children eventually grew up and she achieved not just one, but two studio spaces of her own (the second being the former Palais de Danse in St. Ives) – proving that not having ‘a room of one’s own’ doesn’t have to be forever. Just know that the lack thereof can be survivable, at least for a while.
