Coming home to Charleston
- Mok
- Jun 4
- 2 min read
Queer Belonging in Bloomsbury’s Garden
Last week, I stepped into a world I’ve long read about, but never quite imagined I’d feel so at home in. The Charleston Festival, held at the iconic Charleston House near Lewes in East Sussex, was more than just a celebration of art and ideas — for me, it became a quiet, personal moment of belonging.
Charleston was once the country retreat of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, central figures of the early 20th-century Bloomsbury Group. It was a haven for radical thought, artistic experimentation, and nonconformist love — and yes, for queerness. This rural farmhouse, just outside Brighton, became a sanctuary where boundaries between life and art blurred, where chosen families were forged, and where LGBTQ+ lives were lived openly, defiantly, and with beauty.
In Pride Month, it felt especially poignant to walk through these rooms and gardens. To sit, with my friend Clare, in the blooming cottage garden where so many conversations must’ve unfolded under Sussex skies. The walls of Charleston whisper with stories — not just of Woolf and Keynes and Carrington, but of lives lived against the grain, with courage and colour.
I’ve spent years researching LGBTQ+ history — often because it hasn’t been told. So much of our past has been hidden or erased, our voices absent from the mainstream stories. But sitting in the garden at Charleston, I felt something rare: I felt like I was sitting with my ancestors. Not just literary or artistic icons, but my queer ancestors. People who created, loved, and resisted in their own quiet, radical ways. For a brief moment, I wasn’t researching the past — I was in it.
That’s the power of spaces like Charleston House. They aren’t just heritage sites; they’re living reminders that queer people have always been here. We’ve always created beauty. We’ve always found ways to exist authentically, even when the world tried to silence us. And as much as Pride is about protest and visibility, it’s also about homecoming — about recognising where we’ve been, so we can imagine where we’re going.
Charleston Festival itself was a joyful riot of literature, conversation, and connection. But for me, the magic was quieter: in the scent of the roses, the faded pattern on a painted chair, the stories etched into every corner of that remarkable house. It reminded me why LGBTQ+ spaces matter — not just in cities, but in the countryside too. We need places where we see ourselves reflected in history, not just in rainbow flags for a month, but in bricks, mortar, and memory.
I left Charleston with sun on my face and a lump in my throat. Because sometimes, history isn’t something you study — it’s something you feel. And in that garden, I felt it: I belonged.
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