Woodwork

The masterpieces of Sussex’s radical Christian commune

Ditchling in East Sussex is a small, picturesque village with all the trappings: medieval church, half-timbered house, tea shops, a common, intrusive new housing developments down the road, a good walk from the nearest train station and the Downs on its doorstep. But the resonance of the place owes much to the remarkable artistic activity that has bloomed since Eric Gill moved his family there in 1907. It was part craft commune, part lay monastery, a living experiment in distributism, the radical Christian political philosophy that held that land should be distributed as widely as possible. It was an attempt to resurrect the medieval guild. Gill’s Catholic community even had

Imperfections in wood can make for the loveliest carvings

I am married to a wood snob. When we bought our house in 1999, my husband insisted that all the shelves (he is an antiquarian book dealer, so there are miles of them) should be made of ‘real’ wood, with not an inch of Medium Density Fibreboard. The price made me squeal. But a quarter of a century on, while friends’ MDF shelving droops like cables between telegraph poles, ours remains beautifully strong and straight. Callum Robinson would understand why this matters. A master woodcarver and cabinetmaker, plying his trade from a workshop in Scotland (location vague – ‘in a forest beside a loch nestled in the Scottish hills’), he