Residential

The school

The BookBound school is aimed for writers of non-fiction and fiction who are already underway with their projects (samples of which will be requested beforehand). It offers support in the form of an optional morning talk for an hour, plus group feedback/chat in the reception rooms in the evenings.

For much of the rest of the time, guests will be expected to be working in seclusion on their texts. Should they seek additional support or teaching, during the course or afterwards, this will be available at extra cost.

The school believes that healthy eating and exercise are essential for the writing brain. Food (buffet breakfast, cooked dinner) is vegetarian, organic wherever possible, and may even be sourced from the Hall’s kitchen garden.

As for exercise, the tutoring staff tutor can guide guests across the harbour to our quiet beaches, and on more adventurous walks to the Downs, where paths lead up to the South Downs way. There will also be the opportunity for shopping in Brighton during the day, and a guided trip through the stews of the city in the evening.

Or on summer weekends, guests might prefer simply to sit outside and watch the cricket that’s been played on The Green for more than a century.

When schools are not running at the Hall, rooms may be available for single-person stays, for writers who just want a get-away-and-get-on-with-it individual work retreat for a few days or a week, with optional mentoring support. Contact us for available dates.

The Hall

The Hall, on the village green in Southwick, West Sussex, is a Grade-II* listed 17C mansion that is a ten-minute walk from the secluded local beach and a fifteen-minute walk from the South Downs national park. Its flag-stoned hearth has been dated to 1610, when Shakespeare was finishing his last play.

The Hall is easily accessible from London and other major cities – by rail a four-minute walk from the mainline station, and by road just off the M23/A23/A27 arterial route.

It can comfortably accommodate six paying guests, each with their own double room and desk, along with less commodious rooms for staff such as tutors. There are three bathrooms, two dining rooms, a kitchen for guests and a main kitchen for providing main meals.

The Hall’s grand knapped-flint front remains in a remarkable state of preservation. All of its original exterior and interior wall plans are unchanged, yet the recently and sympathetically refurbished building has the merciful benefits of modernised heating and kitchen spaces.

Above the Georgian porch are two blue plaques, evidence of the Hall’s rich literary and artistic heritage. These commemorate two 20th-century occupants: the bestselling author and broadcaster, S.P.B. Mais, and Douglas Stannus Gray, a portraitist and landscape painter who was a protégé of Rex Whistler.

Mais was well-connected, and his recorded house guests at the Hall include Graham Greene, Sir John Betjeman, J.M Barrie, George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells and Anthony Burgess.

In the 1950s and 60s, the Hall was used as an art school. This pictorial heritage goes further back to another owner, Dr Edward Ferdinand Grun, the village doctor and a cinematic pioneer in the circle of early Brighton and Shoreham filmmakers who constituted the ‘first Hollywood’.

Dr Grun invented high-speed camera lenses, and one that could shoot a primitive form of colour. This spirit of wet-film photography is revived in the Hall, with darkroom facilities available.

To the rear of the Hall is a large secluded flint-walled garden canopied by mature trees. Despite being only 15 minutes from Brighton central rail station, the Hall is a remarkably quiet space that offers ample opportunity for inspiration and reflection. The current owner is himself an author and journalist.

A minute’s walk away, across the village cricket green, is a small early 1960s shopping precinct with cafes, shops and a supermarket. It is nowadays considered by architectural students as a remarkably preserved gem of the genre.

Disability access for the Hall is unfortunately unavailable and cannot be remedied due to the building’s Grade II* listed status, which renders it exempt from such requirements. Some of the stairs are indeed steep.