The long happy marriage and the very separate bedrooms of Vita Sackville-West and her husband, Harold Nicolson, will be celebrated at their Kent home as the National Trust turns its attention for the first time to the gay history locked within the walls of many of its properties.

The Nicolsons were a famously devoted couple, and had two sons, the writer and publisher Nigel and art historian Benedict, but both also had passionate relationships with partners of the same sex.

Their book-lined cottage home still full of their possessions, surrounded by the idyllic gardens they created at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, has rarely been seen by the public because it was maintained by the family as a writer’s retreat, but it will now be on view by timed ticket every day the gardens are open.