LGBTQ+ history at Smallhythe Place
LGBTQ+ heritage plays a vital part in the stories we tell. Smallhythe Place has been shaped and enriched by people who challenged conventional ideas of gender and sexuality. Most famously here, Edith Craig, Chris St John and Clare Atwood.
About the trio
Edith Craig, Clare Atwood (known as Tony Atwood) and Christabel Marshall (known as Christopher St John) lived a life of domesticity at Smallhythe Place during the first half of the 20th century.
Edith Craig
Edith (Edy) was the daughter of Ellen Terry and a trailblazing theatre director, producer and actress. She was dedicated to the fight for equality for women and women's suffrage. In 1911, she founded The Pioneer Players to support the suffragist cause. The group often performed plays written by Chris St John, which explored themes around abortion, class oppression and sex work.
Read more about Edy here.
Chris St. John
Chris was a writer, actress, suffragette and Oxford Scholar. She wrote novels and plays, including an adapation of Cicely Hamilton's 'How The Vote Was Won'. She was a passionate fan of Ellen Terry, who she bombarded with letters and poems before finally being invited to meet her idol.
On a subsequent visit, she was introduced to Edy, who was mending her mother's costumes. When the two women shook hands, Chris's finger was pricked by the needle. She later wrote that it was "cupid's dart... I loved Edy from that moment."
Clare Atwood
Clare was a talented painter and had studied at the prestigious Westminster School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art. During the First World War, she was commissioned by the Women's Work Sub-committee of the Imperial War Museum to produce several pieces depicting the activities of the Women's Voluntary Service. Today, her artwork is held in collections around the world, including the Tate and the V&A in the UK.
In 1916, Edy invited Clare to move in with her and Chris at Smallhythe Place, where the trio lived together for the rest of their lives.
A network of women
Smallhythe was visited by many other queer women including Radclyffe Hall, Virginia Woolf and her lover Vita Sackville-West, who lived at nearby Sissinghurst. Christopher, like many women, was quickly mesmerised by Vita, and recorded her intense feelings in her diary.
Smallhythe soon became a hub for social gatherings and weekend parties. Many of the invitees moved in varied social circles whose lives are part of the LGBTQ+ stories we tell.
Whenever you went there, you wondered whether you were living in the world you normally knew, or had walked through into a world more poetical, a world more romantic, a world where values were different
Domestic life at Smallhythe Place
Life at Smallhythe for Edy, Chris and Clare was a rural idyll. They found the rambling beauty of the garden and the picturesque Tudor Priest House, where they lived at the bottom of the garden, very romantic.
With Chris and Clare choosing to go by male names, they challenged traditional expectations of society in both their domestic lives and professional careers.
After Edy passed away in 1947, Clare and Chris continued to live here together. Today, Chris and Tony are buried next to each other, in the graveyard of St John the Baptist Church next door. The location of Edy's remains is sadly a mystery, but a commerorative plaque bears her name in the churchyard alongside Chris and Clare's names.
Visitors can also learn more about the trio by stepping into the Writing Hut, where Chris spent a lot of her time writing.
