Description

This List entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 28/06/2017

SU 36 SW
6/126

HAM,
SPRAY ROAD,
Ham Spray House

II

House; c1830. Stucco on brick, slate roof. Two-storey, Five bays to garden front,
with long extension to east, the rear brick laced flint. Central door, half-
glazed with margin glazing, and large 12-pane sashes. Square cast iron porch
with raised ball finial, remodelled from original verandah. To rear, central
bay drawn forward with wide entrance door and side lights. Wing to west
terminates in bow with four sashes each floor. Roof hipped with boxed eaves.
Interior: Ceiling cornices. Blue and yellow tiles in kitchen and larder said
to be by Dora Carrington.

Ham Spray House was home to artist Dora Carrington, Ralph Partridge and writer Lytton Strachey. Carrington and Partridge married in 1921 and the trio moved to Ham Spray House in 1924. They shared a ménage a trois, and had open relationships, often with same-sex partners. Strachey died in 1932, and Dora Carrington committed suicide shortly after.
Strachey wrote Elizabeth and Essex (1928), Portraits in Miniature (1931) and Characters and Commentaries (1933) in the first floor library of Ham Spray House. The library, designed by Carrington, retains fireplace tiles with Strachey’s monogram, a painting of an owl on a book, and a false bookcase with bookspines of books with humorous titles.
Ham Spray House is an important building connected with the Bloomsbury Group, a group of artists and writers of the early-to-mid twentieth century. The group included Carrington, Partridge, Strachey, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, E.M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes. The group was in the vanguard of English modernism, influential in art, literature, philosophy and culture. Many members of the group shared sexual and romantic relationships with each other.

Listing NGR: SU3430963050

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26479583

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Renovating Old Houses: Bringing New Life to Vintage Homes (For Pros By Pros)
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides): Written by Charles O'Brien, 2014 Edition, Publisher: Yale University Press [Hardcover]
• 
  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)