A Bloomsbury Tea Party (AW46)

This early nineteenth century house in Wiltshire was the home, between 1924 and 1932, of the Bloomsbury Group writer and author of Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey, and the painter who adored him, Dora Carrington. Ham Spray House was discovered by Carrington in 1923 while hunting for a suitable property in which to set up home with Strachey and her husband, Ralph Partridge. Ham Spray became a magnet for their friends, lovers and relatives. Carrington was largely responsible for the domestic side of Ham Spray and here we see her, presiding over the tea table, awkwardly sandwiched between Lytton and a visitor, Virginia Woolf, who are deep in intellectual gossip. Tiberius the cat is giving Mrs Woolf one of his looks.