The author Jane Austen lived most of her life in Hampshire, and her final years in the village of Chawton. It's the only one of her many homes you can still visit, having been opened in July 1949 as the Jane Austen's House Museum. The first literary pilgrims only got to see one room, but precisely 70 years later the site is a proper attraction filled with ephemera, epistles and biographical detail. A short distance across the village is Chawton House, a stately home inherited by her brother, and whose existence helps to explain much of Miss Austen's literary universe. The two combine to make a persuasive day out.
"I am excessively fond of a cottage; there is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them."
[Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility]
Before moving to Chawton Jane's life had become increasingly unsettled, her father's retirement uprooting the family to Bath and his death leaving them financially vulnerable. It came as a great relief when her brother invited them to live in a tied property on his new estate, gifting the female members of the family a decent sized corner cottage in the heart of the village. Jane lived here from 1809 to 1817, the peace and security gifting her the time to focus on writing, until the onset of a chronic disease snuffed out her career at the age of just 41.
The museum is now too busy to allow entrance up the garden path, so visitors enter up the side alley via a shop in an outbuilding. This is stocked with enough books to satisfy the most ardent Austenophile, and also the obligatory bookmarks, postcards and chocolate. From here you get the freedom of the backyard and the garden, its borders riotously planted and currently in full summer splendour. A small visitor centre doubles up as a cinema for playing a looping 10 minute biographical film, all very useful as background info, and then you can head into the cottage proper.
It had been a pub before Jane and her sister Cassandra moved in, and was later divided into labourers' lodgings, so don't expect to see the cottage precisely as Jane would have known it. Also most of Jane's letters were destroyed by her sister after her death (to protect family sensibilities), so the museum has spent a small fortune over the years acquiring some of the few possessions known to survive. The most evocative of these is her writing table - a 12-sided slice of polished walnut - upon which the bespectacled author polished many of her most famous paragraphs.
Upstairs are a jade ring she definitely wore, fragments of letters she definitely wrote and a bed which looks like something she might have slept in. Various first editions are on show, plus a reading room where you can settle back with Mansfield Park in Russian or a Marvel graphic novelisation. In one room we learn that when Jane's estate was settled after her death, sales of Sense and Sensibility contributed £200 and Pride and Prejudice just £110. The museum makes the most of what it has, and presents its information to maximum effect, and there is of course a genteel tea shop across the road after you've finished.
"Their estate was large, and their residence was in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance."
[Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility]
Quarter of a mile distant is Chawton House, the Elizabethan manor house inherited by Jane's brother Edward and which remained in the family until the 1990s. She'd have walked up here for family dinners or to while away some time in the library, referring to the place as 'the Great House' in her correspondence. It very much looks the part, with twiddly chimneys and oak-panelled corridors, all accessed up a sweeping front drive and surrounded by splendid gardens.
If all you want to do is access the courtyard tearoom, you get in for nothing. Otherwise it's £10 for a house and gardens combo, kicking off with a wander through historic chambers, up a creaky wooden staircase and through the upstairs suite. The key theme throughout isn't Austen but female authors, the house having been purchased in 1992 by a businesswoman whose interest was in establishing The Centre for the Study of Early Women's Writing, 1600–1830. The last room on the tour is therefore a library containing thousands of vintage books, which has to be unlocked before you're allowed inside. You might be most impressed by the Mary Wollstonecraft first edition, or maybe the Belgian hunting tapestry, or (if you're a philistine) probably the secret drinks cupboard.
The gardens are a delight to explore, and are thought to have inspired the fictional landscape in Mansfield Park. A large part is a wooded wilderness nudged up beside a lime avenue, but the prettiest chunk is the walled kitchen garden built one year too late for Jane to have enjoyed. Here the gardener was hard at work thinning out the strawberries, the purple-headed thistle-tops were enormous and the marjoram in the herb garden was alive with bees and butterflies. Come and enjoy the brand new Garden Trail, launched earlier this month, with key locations marked by apposite Austenesque quotations. And maybe hurry, because the business foundation which used to fund Chawton House has now turned its focus elsewhere which means crowdfunding donations has become the urgent way forward.
Jane Austen's House Museum: daily, 10am-5pm, £9 Chawton House: daily, 11am-4.30pm, £10
» £1 off admission at one property if you show a ticket from the other
» Half-price admission to Art Pass holders
Chawton is a lovely linear village packed with thatched cottages, spoiled only on its outskirts by the A31 dual carriageway scything through. If tearooms aren't your thing there's also a 16th century pub with exposed beams, cask ales and a seasonal menu. Visit the churchyard to find the graves of Jane Austen's mother and sister, both called Cassandra. Jane is buried 15 miles away at WinchesterCathedral.
The nearest station to Chawton is in Alton, the nearby market town, and an easy ride out of Waterloo. From the station it's a walk of just under two miles to Jane Austen's House, initially along the high street which is very pleasant indeed. An illustrated leaflet showing the walking route is available from the Curtis Museum in the town centre, unless its Sunday or Monday when that's closed, in which case download the trail here. Ignore the sign in the ticket hall which recommends you take the number 64 bus to the village, because that won't even take you a mile before you have to get off and walk for the last fifteen minutes.
