{"id":30008,"date":"2026-09-29T13:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T12:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.propertysurveying.co.uk\/newsletter\/?page_id=30008"},"modified":"2026-09-29T13:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T12:49:09","slug":"houses-with-literary-connections-6-vita-sackville-west-and-sissinghurst","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.propertysurveying.co.uk\/newsletter\/?page_id=30008","title":{"rendered":"Houses with Literary Connections 6: Vita Sackville-West and Sissinghurst"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Houses with Literary Connections 6:\u00a0 Vita Sackville-West and Sissinghurst<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sissinghurst is synonymous with white.\u00a0 Whether it is the famous white garden that has inspired gardeners of properties large and small across the world, or the addition of the name to flowers such as a white form of pulmonaria, Sissinghurst = white.<\/p>\n

Vita Sackville-West\u2019s unorthodox and tempestuous life and loves are well documented, perhaps better known now than her success as a prolific writer and journalist.<\/p>\n

Vita Sackville-West 1892-1962<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vita was born Victoria Mary Sackville-West in 1892 at Knole in Kent, the only child of Lionel Sackville-West, 3rd<\/sup> Baron Sackville, and his cousin Victoria.\u00a0 Vita\u2019s mother was the convent-raised, illegitimate daughter of the 2nd<\/sup> Baron Sackville and a Spanish dancer Petita (real name Josefa Duran y Ortega).<\/p>\n

Knole, now itself a National Trust property, had been given to the Sackvilles by Elizabeth 1st<\/sup>.\u00a0 Through Salic law, female Vita was not able to inherit Knole when her father died, which was a life-long grief.<\/p>\n

A lonely child, educated by governesses and later at an exclusive Mayfair girls\u2019 school, Vita wrote prolifically, including in French, from an early age.\u00a0 She felt inferior intellectually to her peers in the Bloomsbury Group and particularly to her lover Virginia Woolf.<\/p>\n

Vita the Adult<\/strong><\/p>\n

At 18, debutante Vita was courted by scions of noble and wealthy families, including the future Lords Harewood and Granby.\u00a0 After a marriage-busting affair with historian Geoffrey Scott, she rejected them all in favour of a (relatively) penniless diplomat, Harold Nicolson.\u00a0 They travelled widely and lived initially in Constantinople (now Istanbul), where Nicolson was posted until the birth of the first of their two children.<\/p>\n

However, the Nicolson\u2019s relationship was unorthodox.\u00a0 It was a lifelong affectionate partnership but it was an open marriage with both Vita and Harold having homosexual relationships throughout at a time when this was considered morally and socially unthinkable.\u00a0 This duality in Vita\u2019s sexuality, together with her interest in a possible Roma exoticism through her grandmother, appears in the themes and character of her writing, including thinly veiled references to her lovers.\u00a0 These included (amongst others) Violet Keppel, whose mother Alice was Edward VII\u2019s mistress, and Virginia Woolf.\u00a0 Woolf depicted Vita in her novel \u2018Orlando\u2019, in which the protagonist moves through history, changing gender at different points, to experience events from different perspectives.<\/p>\n

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Vita and Writing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vita wrote copiously throughout her life.\u00a0 Even as a child she wrote novels and poems.\u00a0 Her lover Virginia Woolf commented on how \u2018fluently\u2019 she wrote and, at the time, Vita\u2019s works received greater public acclaim than her own, more experimental, writing. \u00a0In 1927, Vita won the Hawthornden Prize for her 1926 poem \u2018The Land\u2019, winning it again in 1933 (the only writer to do so twice).\u00a0 She also wrote a play, autobiographies (such as that of Restoration playwright Aphra Behn and of her grandmother, Pepita), travelogues and guides, including guides to Knole, Berkeley Castle and Hidcote Manor.<\/p>\n

Vita and Sissinghurst\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong>\u00a0In 1930, the Nicholsons moved to Sissinghurst Castle, which had once been owned by Vita\u2019s Sackville ancestors.\u00a0 It was an Elizabethan ruin and the creation of a dwelling and surrounding gardens was a labour of love that lasted decades.\u00a0 Vita took up writing again, too, as with Harold retired from diplomacy and two boys at Eton, they needed money.<\/p>\n

From 1946 until 1961, the year before her death, Vita wrote a column “In your Garden”, in The Observer.\u00a0 Although she was not a trained horticulturalist, it made Sissinghurst one of the most visited gardens in England and 1948 she became a founder member of the National Trust’s garden committee.<\/p>\n

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\"\"When Vita died in 1962 her son Nigel came to live at Sissinghurst. \u00a0He was followed by his son Adam, whose wife Sarah Raven owns the nearby flower-growers\u2019 paradise, Perch Hill Farm (photos left and below).<\/p>\n

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Vita Sackville-West Key Literary Works <\/strong><\/p>\n

The following list is extremely selective as she wrote extensively in most genres!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Poetry \u2013 more than a dozen collections, including the Hawthornden prize-winning \u00a0\u2018The Land\u2019 in 1926 and \u2018Collected Poems\u2019 in 1933.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Novels \u2013 at least 13, some unpublished juvenilia<\/strong><\/p>\n