Topical Budget Ham Spray September 1929

Bloomsbury Group antics at the Wiltshire home of Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey.

This amateur newsreel spoof was one of three films made by Bernard Penrose at Ham Spray House in Wiltshire, home of Dora Carrington, her husband Ralph Partridge and Lytton Strachey. Other members of the extended Bloomsbury Group seen in the film include David Garnett, Frances Marshall and Strachey's brother James. This may be the only film footage of Lytton Strachey, who bought Ham Spray House in 1922 and died there ten years later of cancer; unable to live without him, Carrington committed suicide. Writers and artists continued to visit until Partridge's death in 1960.