Gentle Readers, these fantastic images are by Tony Grant from London Calling. The text are quotations from the fabulous Chawton House Library site. This site is rich with information and history. I am so impressed with the section on chickens, which were rescued and given a chicken-friendly coop for roosting and free ranging. The horses are magnificent as well. Sandy Lerner has done a magnificent job of turning this once ruin of a house into an historic library and museum. As Tony’s images show, this house is a world treasure .
Drive leading to Chawton House. Image @Tony Grant
In April 1551, the land was sold for £180 to John Knight, whose family had been tenant farmers in Chawton since the thirteenth century and who had prospered sufficiently to wish to acquire a large estate.
Front entrance. Image @Tony Grant
The medieval manor house was replaced by John Knight’s grandson, also called John, with the largely Elizabethan house that can be seen today. – History
Window detail. Image @Tony Grant
Eaves. Image @Tony Grant
Climbing shrub. Image @Tony Grant
Side view with side door. Image @Tony Grant
In 1781, Thomas Knight II inherited, but when he and his wife Catherine showed no sign of having children of their own, they adopted a son of the Reverend George Austen, who was a cousin of Thomas Knight’s.
Edward is introduced to the Knights. Image @Chawton House Library
Edward Austen Knight eventually took over management of the estates at Godmersham and Chawton in 1797, living mostly at Godmersham and letting the Great House at Chawton to gentlemen tenants.
Chawton Cottage, where Jane Austen lived. Image@Tony Grant
In 1809 he offered a house in the village to his mother and two sisters Cassandra and Jane, and it was there that Jane Austen began the most prolific period of her writing life.
Image @Tony Grant
Sandy Lerner. Image @The Telegraph
By 1987, when Richard Knight inherited, parts of the house were derelict, the roof leaked, timbers were rotting and the gardens were overgrown with scrub. The decline was halted in 1993 with the sale of a 125 year lease to a new charity, Chawton House Library, founded by the American entrepreneur and philanthropist, Sandy Lerner, via the charitable foundation established by her and her husband Leonard Bosack, the Leonard X. Bosack and Bette M. Kruger Foundation.
Kitchen garden entrance. Image @Tony Grant
The grounds and gardens at Chawton House Library continue to be in the process of restoration although a great deal has already been achieved. The focus of the restoration is the English landscape period of the eighteenth century together with Edward Austen Knight’s early nineteenth-century additions of walled kitchen garden, shrubberies and parkland. – The estate
Kitchen gardens. Image @Tony Grant
The Library Terrace was built between 1896 and 1910 (probably in 1904-05) by Montagu Knight (1844-1914). The terrace was actually an Arts & Crafts addition and almost certainly influenced by Edwin Lutyens.
Going round the back of the house. Image @Tony Grant
View from the gardens. Image @Tony Grant
Gravel paths are not typical of the English Landscape period and were probably introduced by Edward Knight II (1794-1879).
View from one of the gravel paths. Image @Tony Grant
According to Montagu Knight, the brick Upper Terrace was built in 1901. In the early twentieth century this was a broad grass terrace with a central gravel path, recently uncovered.
Image @Chawton House Library
In Jane Austen’s time, the kitchen garden was located to the north of the Rectory (opposite the current entrance to Chawton House). Edward Austen Knight had the idea to build a new walled garden during his sister’s lifetime: in 1813, Jane Austen wrote to her brother Frank:
‘[h]e [Edward Austen Knight] talks of making a new Garden; the present is a bad one & ill situated, near Mr Papillon’s; — he means to have the new, at the top of the Lawn behind his own house’.
However, her brother’s plans did not come to fruition until after her death in 1817. – The estate
The grounds. Image @Tony Grant
The farm buildings. Image @Tony Grant
The fields. One can see the horses. Image @Tony Grant
The Wilderness dates from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and was originally set out geometrically with trees in straight rows, a practice which was later dropped. It survived the English Landscape improvements.
St. Nicholas Church. Image @Tony Grant
Church Copse. This area to the rear of St. Nicholas Church was cleared between 1999 and 2000, revealing the Knight family pet cemetery and the rear lychgate into the churchyard. Of particular interest in this area are the several large, important eighteenth-century lime trees and a yew tree, probably from the same period. – The estate
Image @Tony Grant
Jane Austen's World 
And I appreciate the great pictures! I’ve always dreamed of visiting England some day, however, your pics are probably as close as I’ll ever get to seeing the sights. THANKS for your efforts for all us who are on the wrong side of the Great Pond.
Diane D.
This is absolutely wonderful Tony (and Vic),
Diane (above) has said what I would say, so the only thing I’ll repeat is thank you very much!
Cathy Allen
I agree with Diane.
Amazing! Stunning! Wonderful!
I love all these photos! A pure wonder!
It’s superb!
Thanks for sharing dream!
Have a good sunday!
This is a this terrific piece!
Having visited Chawton last October, for the first time in my life, it is as if you have given me a beautiful photo album!
Thank you.
wonderful pics. went
to the Uk in 2006 but never made it there, trying to get back soon will see this treasure for sure thanks
What a delightful entry! I am sending this off to “the girls” in hopes that it will ignite plans for a trip to the English countryside. My thanks!
Thank you for sharing this, it’s so beautiful.
Thanks for sharing. I hope someday to get over there to see this.
Wonderful to see that this lovely country house is being restored and maintained; interesting to see that an American is spearheading it.
The photos are beautiful! Thanks for sharing.
I was at Jane Austen’s House Museum 2 summers ago. Unfortunately, our time was so limited that we didn’t get to Chawton House. You gave me a sense that I did by the pictures and comments! I dearly hope to get back there sometime in the next 3-5 years!
Dear Tony, thank you very much for the amazing photos!
I had the same experience as Karen’s in that, although I had the chance of visiting Jane Austen’s House and St Nicholas Church in Chawton, as well as Jane Austen’s parish church in her birthplace, Steventon, the tour I was on didn’t include Chawton House Library. I’m determined to go back to Chawton and visit the Library next time I’m in England. Thanks for inspiring me!
I loved my visit there years ago….but Tony, you missed taking a picture of the famous “Ha-Ha”. Thanks for this post..a lovely escape from the realities of New York.
This is so cool. My absolute goal in life is to visit Jane Austen’s house some day. I might be going to Europe in a few months and this has just made me all the more excited!
Thanks for the smashing photos! Last year I took a class on rare book librarianship and had to write a paper convincing a (fictional) library board to buy a (real) rare book. I based my library on Chawton House. I drooled a lot over the rare books in their catalog and even more over the ones they don’t have! I would love to work there someday or even just visit.
I visited Chawton House in July 2010 & was fortunate to arrive just as a tour of the house was about to start. I managed to convince the guide to let me join in. It is well worth arranging a group & booking a tour. The parts of the inside we were shown: the Hall, the Morning room (where the family sat after breakfast, & which contains the silhouette of Edward Austen’s adoption by the Knights, plus portraits of 18th & 19th century woman, including quite erotic ones of well-known mistresses – part of the Library collection – Jane would not have gazed upon them!), the main stairs, upper gallery with family portraits, numerous stained-glass coats-of-arms, the basement kitchens & Game room, where Edward hung his birds, with a row of hooks for each day of the week. Oh, & the library! Rare books are laid out opened under glass, plus numerous volumes are on shelves & available for study. Such treasures, including many hand-written novels by women that were circulated among friends, but never published. One of the librarians gave us a little lecture on the research being done; we are indeed lucky that some rich Americans have a philanthropic tradition to do good works after Existence has bestowed them with good fortune! Otherwise, this collection would be squirreled away in some climate-controlled vault, too valuable an investment to see the light of day. Agar Cleverdon
I was told St Nicholas Church is not the one Jane would have gazed upon. Central heating was installed some time around 1900, & the church promptly burned down! A common occurrence apparently!
Lovely post! The pictures are fantastic, just whet the appetite to see for oneself. Thank you!
I was here back in 2007 for a conference and I fell in love with the place immediately. I miss the serenity I found here so much that when I think about it physically hurts – that is how desperate I am to go back. I loved the greenery and the overall welcoming feeling I got here. Brilliant post!