Items from the Collection of Grace Higgens, cook and housekeeper to the Bloomsbury Group

A selection of paintings and works of art belonging to Grace Higgens, housekeeper at the Bloomsbury Group's country retreat, Charleston Farmhouse, near Lewes in Sussex, are to come under the hammer at Gorringes Auctioneers on Thursday 13th May.

Grace Higgens joined the bohemian household of the artist Vanessa Bell as a young maid in 1920. For the next fifty years she ran Charleston, a country haven for Vanessa and her partner Duncan Grant's circle of unconventional and talented friends as housemaid, nurse, cook and finally housekeeper, and became a dear and close friend of the family.

Charleston was the hub of the Bloomsbury world and Grace not only looked after all the various members of Duncan Grant's and Vanessa Bell's family who lived there, but a regular stream of visitors. Grace would round everyone up for meals by standing in the hall and ringing a small bronze bell (£200-400).

In 1934 Grace married a local Sussex man, Walter Higgens, and their only child John was born in 1935. John still lives close by to Charleston Farmhouse and has many happy memories of growing up there. Both he and his mother often sat for the artists, and the sale includes a painting of Grace at the kitchen table by Vanessa Bell, a forerunner of the large painting ('The Kitchen', 1943) that hangs upstairs at Charleston (£8,000-12,000). There is also a portrait of John Higgens painted in 1939 (£3,000-5,000). John recalls that it was painted in the top studio at Charleston - one of the first works to be painted there after the studio was opened (£3,000-5,000).

Much of the food eaten at Charleston was grown or reared at home. The sale features a painting by Duncan Grant depicting the granary and pigsty opposite the front of the house where Grace looked after Mrs Bell's pigs (£6,000-8,000). The pigs were reared and then killed for the table.

The Bloomsbury group loved to travel abroad to paint and find inspiration, and Grace often accompanied them. On her first trip to Menton Roger in the South of France with Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, Grace decided to join the other who were swimming in the sea. However, Grace could not swim and almost drowned before being rescued by one of the party. As a momento, in 1960, Duncan Grant gave Grace a landscape he had painted of the area, which has an estimate of £15,000-20,000.

The sale also includes a small selection of ceramics by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.

Auction: Thursday 13th May
Viewing 7th & 8th May