FROM Picasso to Virginia Woolf, Henry James to Duncan Grant, Rudyard Kipling to Lee Miller – the Sussex countryside has inspired them all.

For a county of just 1.6 million people and just short of one million acres, we definitely punch above our weight when it comes to the creative stakes.

Charleston, Farley Farm House, Bateman’s and Lamb House all became not only homes of great artists and writers - but major cultural institutions whose influence lives on.

Darren Clarke, head of curatorial services at Charleston, said that practicalities played an important role in the Bloomsbury Group finding their spiritual home in Sussex.

Writer Duncan Grant and his artist lover David Garnett were conscientious objectors in the First World War and needed to be near a farm to work. Meanwhile the Bloomsbury Group all needed to be in close to their London homes and their city’s cultural scene. And Sussex land was cheap.

But those practicalities grew into something stronger and flowed into their work.

Darren Clarke said: “I think the landscape was a big inspiration.

“Vanessa Bell [a Bloomsbury artist and sister of Virginia Woolf] talks about the impact of the chalk, in that it brought a softness to the landscape, and the different colours it created, the greys, the browns, the reds, that she really loved.

“They also really enjoyed the people.

“In 1916 at the height of the First World War as conscientious objectors they felt welcome and didn’t have any trouble unlike other conscientious objectors elsewhere in the country.”

For Rudyard Kipling it was the county’s rich history that captured his imagination, according to Lamb House manager Gary Enstone.

He said: “I think Kipling felt that there was history here. His verse The Way through the Woods and The Smugglers Song reflect that influence not just on himself but the generations of families before his.

“I think he became so entwined with Sussex life that he felt happy to invent tales that reflected the history of these lands and these people.

“While the South Downs, the undulating hills and the chalk below foot all have a mysticism as well, an otherworldly influence that inspired him and many before and since.

“It certainly is a landscape that can allow the imagination to breathe.”

While these great cultural heavyweights are now gone, their legacy remains stronger than just a collection of beautiful homes.

Mr Clarke said: “I think that influence lives on still, particular in Brighton and Hove and Lewes where you have a liberation, people are free and live creative lives.

“And you have places all through Sussex like Hastings which is full of artists doing interesting work.”