Virginia Woolf's writing hut

Virginia Woolf's writing shed is the latest historic garden office to feature in The Guardian's Writers' Rooms series. Hermione Lee writes about her writing room at Monk's House in Sussex, a revamped potting shed with marvellous rural views. Lee points out that it was not an ideal working atmosphere:

"She was always being distracted - by Leonard sorting the apples over her head in the loft, or the church bells at the bottom of the garden, or the noise of the children in the school next door, or the dog sitting next to her and scratching itself and leaving paw marks on her manuscript pages. In winter it was often so bitterly cold and damp that she couldn't hold her pen and had to retreat indoors."

It was in this hut that she wrote various masterpieces including Mrs Dalloway and The Waves and, rather more sadly, her suicide note to her husband Leonard before heading for the nearby River Ouse. The whole piece is well worth reading, probably the best in the whole series so far.