The Catholic craft community in Ditchling is emerging from the shadow of Eric Gill – and its messages have never been more pertinent

The Catholic craft community in Ditchling is emerging from the shadow of Eric Gill – and its messages have never been more pertinent

An hour out of London, and a century back in time, is an idyllic Sussex community dedicated to simple, ecologically sound living, with mindfulness centre stage and an understanding of God that seems to stretch out beyond its core Catholicism to encompass a much wider sense of spirituality.

This is Ditchling in its heyday, as celebrated in an exhibition at the village’s Museum of Art + Craft. This green, picturesque landscape was once home to some of Britain’s finest craftspeople; artists who lived and worked together under the auspices of the Catholic Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, founded in 1921. It was a holistic, faith-based community of makers and their families, and its members produced outstanding pieces of sculpture, wood engraving, paintings, weaving and stonework.

But Ditchling’s story has been dominated by one artist, Eric Gill, and the central aim of a new exhibition is to rescue it from his shadow – a shadow that became darker and more menacing after the publication in 1989 of Fiona MacCarthy’s biography that revealed Gill had been a serial sex abuser, and that members of his family had been his victims.

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