'I made Virginia Woolf's idea for women a reality'

Sitting in her idyllic garden in Clifford Chambers, just two miles from Stratford-upon-Avon, 85-year-old Sarah Hosking reflects on a journey that has been in the works since she was 20.

After reading Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, she became inspired to make it a reality.

The essay, published in 1929, explores why women have been underrepresented in the arts.

In the book, Woolf imagines a fictional sister of William Shakespeare. Known as Judith, she becomes the embodiment of how society's patriarchal constraints stifled female genius.

Woolf argued that women needed money and personal space to truly thrive creatively.

But the book was more than just an interesting and thoughtful read for Hosking. It became her goal her life.

"I had a long and very enjoyable, very hardworking, mongrel career in the arts," Hosking said.

"I went to art school in the 1960s and then I had work in different areas of endeavour.

"But I'd always meant with my retirement to found a little charity to give reality to Virginia Woolf's wonderful book.

"I read it when I was 20 and I thought, 'one day I will make that happen.' I was absolutely bowled over by it. It's become a feminist polemic ever since."

Now, mere meters away from her home - and cats and chickens - sits Church Cottage, which has housed more than 200 women working in the arts.

The cottage, which is free for guests, is surrounded by wildlife and is a short walk away from the River Stour.

Hosking said one of her guests, who came from a high rise flat in Hackney, "burst into tears" when she arrived.

"I make it as comfortable and as pleasing and as convenient as possible," she added.

But the challenge of setting it up did not come without difficulties.

In 1995, she established the charity Hosking Houses Trust. It wasn't until 2002 that she hosted her first guests.

"I started fundraising in 1999. I could only rake up £5 and I spent that on stamps," she said.

"I wrote to everybody I could think of and I went to the major charities and arts council. Nobody answered for two years.

"I just went on and on and on. I thought it was a good idea. I knew it was a good idea.

"After two years of absolutely nothing happening, Joan Bakewell sent me a cheque for fifty quid and that was just wonderful, and then we got a grant to buy the cottage.

"If you persevere with enough loopy endeavour, something will happen and it did.

"Since then, we've had some very good grants. My brother died and left me everything, and I gave about half of it to the trust.

"It's been lonely, hard work, but it's also been great fun."

The cottage features a kitchen, garden and studio.

Hosking explained that seeing her own mother "thwarted" also inspired the cottage, which is available to women over the age of 40.

"She lived in the wrong time," she said.

"Through my life I've seen middle aged women holding together the office, or the school, or the department or this or that. Very, very competent, but probably under-appreciated and underpaid."

Hosking said women were chosen to stay at the cottage on "sheer, naked merit", adding: "We're not for beginners.

"You've got to have published, or achieved a significant amount of publicised work, in some media or form."

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