In 1930 the town of Rye, an architectural and historical gem on the Sussex coast, was already noted for its taste in the outrageously flamboyant when Radclyffe Hall, notorious as the author of one of the first lesbian novels The Well of Loneliness, chose to come to live there. With her was her partner, Una Troubridge, a sculptor and translator – and also a married woman with a child.

The women did not pretend to be “companions” or “friends”, but lived together openly as a lesbian couple. Both women were also devout Catholics.