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Regency Week in Alton and Chawton: A Summer Jane Austen Event

Posted in Austen Events, Jane Austen's World, tagged , , , , , on May 10, 2023| 8 Comments »

by Brenda S. Cox

A few years ago, on a trip to England, I discovered a wonderful summer Jane Austen event: Regency Week in Alton. Yes, the Jane Austen Festival in Bath in September is great. But for many people, it’s easier to travel in the summer.

And, Austen arguably had closer ties to Alton and Chawton than she did to Bath or Winchester. She spent her last years in the village of Chawton, writing or rewriting all of her novels for publication. Alton is the nearest large town, where her family shopped and visited.

This year’s Regency Week is June 17-25, 2023. I’m excited that I’ll get to speak at this one for the first time! My talk will be “Why Mr. Collins? The Church and Clergy in Jane Austen’s England.” And I will get to do it at Alton’s lovely, historic church, St. Lawrence’s. (When we visited there, the churchwarden showed us bullet holes from the English Civil War in the 1600s.)

The church will also host a Sunday evening choral evensong service, with a Regency theme, and an organ recital. The Friends (Quaker) Meeting House will host a teatime discussion of Sense and Sensibility, which I’m also looking forward to.  

The week kicks off with Regency Day, when you can wander around the town in Regency costume, if you wish. You can visit booths, watch military reenactments, musical entertainment, and dancing, and take a carriage ride. When I went before, I met a number of Austenesque writers, and enjoyed connecting with them. 

On a previous Regency Day, fencing was a highlight of the street events.

Of course a dance workshop, a ball (sold out for this year), and a country dance will be highlights of the week. Guided walks of Alton, Chawton, and the vicinity are offered, focusing on Austen’s connections with the area. Jane Hurst, an expert on the history of the area, leads those. I have met her and she was very helpful to me in my own research for my book.

At the Jane Austen House, tours of the house focusing on Sense and Sensibility and on Pride and Prejudice sound fascinating.  Nearby Chawton House offers a Curators tour of the Quills and Characters exhibit, about Austen-era letter-writing and “women’s experiences of travel, science, reading, and scandal.” A talk about botanical women and tours of the Chawton House Gardens will also be packed with interesting insights. I’m also looking forward to a tour of Gilbert White‘s house in Selborne and his gardens.

Alton Regency Day (promo photo)

Picnics, parades, cocktails, tours, Regency pastimes, craft workshops, talks, and much more fill out this year’s program. Check out the full schedule at their website.

At the 2015 Regency Week, I got to meet some wonderful Austen Variations authors (from left): Abigail Reynolds, Maria Grace, L. L. Diamond, Jane Odiwe, Cassandra Grafton, and Monica Fairview. Since then I have enjoyed many of their books. Booths this year will no doubt focus on other interesting items.

Why a Regency Week in Alton?

I asked the organizers to tell me more about Regency Week and its background. Marie Kelle said:

Jane Austen Regency Week is a 9-day festival held in Alton and Chawton in Hampshire (UK) each year to celebrate both our local internationally-acclaimed writer, and a very interesting period of history, encouraging people to explore their cultural heritage.  It started as just a weekend of events and grew into the 9 day festival we now have.

We have a varied programme covering walks, dancing, tours, talks and much more. The ball is already sold out, but the very enjoyable and less formal Country Dance event still has tickets available.  The week begins with Alton Regency Day which includes a craft and gifts market, Regency and Napoleonic War era re-enactors, Mill Cottage Farm Experience and entertainment from The Kings Pond Shantymen and Alton Morris Dancers.

If you have never been to Regency Week before some highlights for this year are of course Regency Day where, if you wish, you can stroll around dressed in your Regency era outfits, and a Horse and Carriage ride is a must!  Other highlights are Garden Cocktails at Chawton House,  and lunch at the Allen Gallery followed by a tour of the ceramics exhibits. You can also view the Hampshire Libraries Jane Austen Collection at Alton Library. Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility themed tours at Jane Austen’s House, and House Tour and Cream Teas at Wyards Farmhouse are more of the week’s highlights.  

We have some sewing workshops on offer this year: you can make your own flower pot broach at Gilbert White’s House in Selborne and you can make a Regency Era Reticule. Another workshop will show you how to finish and embellish your own bonnet (this workshop includes a ‘posh tea’).  All this along with three guided historical walks, circular countryside walks of the beautiful scenery around Chawton, and much more!

***

I’d love to see you there! Or, if you can’t come this summer, I hope you’ll put it on your wish list for a future summer. :-)

Schedule, Tickets, and Accommodations

The schedule can be found at www.janeaustenregencyweek.co.uk

Tickets for the 2023 Jane Austen Regency Week are now on sale, both on Eventbrite and also from our office by calling Marie on 01420 85057. Contact marie@altoncommunitycentre.org.uk

Regency Week 2023 eventbrite tickets can be found by clicking this link (please note there is a booking fee per ticket at eventbrite, but if you buy direct from Alton Community Centre there is a £3.00 booking fee per transaction no matter how many tickets are booked.

For options for local accommodation see Places to stay. There are also some local rooms/homes etc on AirBnB.

Jane Austen Regency Week is run by a group of volunteers and participating organizations under the auspices of the charity, Alton Community Association CIO. It is funded through ticket sales, sponsorship and advertising.  Jane Austen Regency Week is a fundraising activity for Alton Community Association CIO (reg charity 1173885).

St. Lawrence’s Church in Alton, by the way, was the model for the cover art of my book, Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England. 

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A Drive Through Chawton Village

Posted in 19th Century England, jane austen, Jane Austen's life, Jane Austen's World, tagged , , on May 25, 2013| 13 Comments »

Tony Grant’s recent pictorial visit to Chawton was so popular that I thought you would like to see the village in which Jane Austen lived out the last years of her life. You might want to reference Tony’s images with the ones below, which were taken with Google maps. After I made these, I felt as if I had traveled to Hampshire for a pleasant hour or so. Interestingly, the seasons go back and forth, from late summer to early November.  At times you will see full foliage and at other times the scene was shot in the middle of fall.

Winchester Road to Chawton

Winchester Road to Chawton from A31. You can see the signpost marking the village.

Chawton sits in Hampshire, not far from Alton, Steventon, and Winchester, all familiar Jane Austen places.

Chawton sits in Hampshire, not far from Alton, Steventon, and Winchester, all familiar Jane Austen places.

Lovely narrow lanes

Lovely narrow lanes. Click on the images for a larger version.

Approaching Chawton Cottage on the left and Cassandra's Cup Tea Room, the white building in the distance

Approaching Chawton Cottage behind the tree on the left and Cassandra’s Cup Tea Room, the cream colored building in the middle distance. If you turned right, you would be going to Chawton House, Edward Austen Knight’s residence. But we will be turning left.

Chawton Cottage coming into full view, along with the cross roads sign

Chawton Cottage coming into full view on the left, along with the cross roads sign. Check Tony Grant’s images in the previous post for more details.

This is a slightly different angle of the scene, as if we were arriving from Chawton House.

This is a slightly different angle of the scene, as if we were arriving from Chawton House.

A view of the cottage and garden from Cassandra's Cup tea house.

A view of the cottage and garden from Cassandra’s Cup tea house.

The next few scenes show Chawton Cottage from many angles.

The next few scenes show Chawton Cottage from many angles. This one gives a view into the street and down the village. You can see how close the dining parlor window is to the street and sidewalk (to the right of the door.) This is where Jane Austen wrote and revised her novels.

The following text comes from the 1901 travel book, Hampshire, With the Isle of Wight by George Albemarle Bertie Dewar, John Vaughan. Their description of Jane Austen shows how successfully her family had whitewashed her image as a sweet spinster in whose life not much had happened. I thought you might enjoy reading it as you viewed the rest of my virtual trip through Chawton.

The cottage up close

The cottage up close, with bricked up window on the east side of the drawing room and plaques in honor of Jane Austen. Tourists exit from the garden to the left of the house.

A mile south of Alton is Chawton village. Jane Austen, the writer of the pure sweet stories which at the present time are loved better even than they were when Scott and Macaulay and Lewis sounded their praises, lived with her family at Chawton from 1809 to 1817.”

Few photos capture this angle of the cottage, which has always made me curious.

Few photos capture this angle of the cottage, which has always made me curious. The visitor’s entrance is to the right, through the gate, towards the outbuildings. The gift shop is housed in the brick building to your immediate right.

The house is still standing. Part of it has been made into a workman’s club, whilst the remainder is occupied by three families of working people, but it has been altered a good deal since her time. In the church there is a tablet to the memory of some members of the Austen family, Cassandra Elizabeth and her brothers. Jane Austen was quite a Hampshire woman.”

A view of the gardens.

A view of the gardens and a clear view of the yew trees.

She was born at Steventon near Oakley in December 1775, and lived there till twenty-five years old. I went to see Steventon one day in the summer of 1899, and found it the sleepiest little spot one could imagine. The country is green and leafy, but the scenery is without distinction: there are no hills to speak of, no beautiful troutstreams, no fine old houses, no stately parks. The old parsonage where Jane Austen was born has gone, and there are no remains whatever of her or her family at Steventon.”

Continuing through the village and away from the cottage.

Continuing through the village and away from the cottage, still on Winchester Road. One can imagine the coaches and wagons rattling by the window near Jane’s writing desk.

The spired church in which her father held service stands a little distance from the village at the edge of a hazel and oak coppice. It was in this quiet nook, seven or eight miles from the nearest town, that Jane Austen at twentyone years of age began to write that perfect story “Pride and Prejudice.” In 1797 she was at work on “Sense and Sensibility,” and in 1798 completed “Northanger Abbey.”

You can imagine Jane and Cassandra walking a mile through the village to get to Alton, where they could shop.

Jane and Cassandra walked a mile north through the village to get to Alton, where they could shop.

Where in the world did she get her knowledge of human nature—a knowledge so great that Macaulay was almost ready to extol her as the Shakespeare of her sex? What life could she have seen about Steventon a hundred years ago? In 1801 Jane went to Bath, and in 1805 to Southampton, where the family had rooms in Castle Street: in 1807, as we have seen, the Austens settled at Chawton, and four years after the story “Sense and Sensibility” was published, being followed by “Pride and Prejudice” and “Mansfield Park.”

Looking back, you can see a different approach to Chawton Cottage. In this scene, it would be towards your right.

Looking back, you can see a different approach to Chawton Cottage. In this scene, it would be towards your right around the bend.

In 1817 her health broke down and she removed to rooms in College Street, Winchester, and died there the same year. The memorials of Jane Austen are but few, and it is clear that her life was uneventful. It has been said that the woman without a history is the happier. The life of Jane Austen, like her death, was placid; there is here no record of harrowing anguish, or anxiety, such as we find in the story of that strong sufferer Mrs. Oliphant. Nor in the scant materials which have been left for a “life,” could the biographer find anything in the nature of a sad love-affair.”

No wonder Jane Austen was inspired to write in this pretty and quaint setting, so quintessentially British. Hope you enjoyed your short trip.

No wonder Jane Austen was inspired to write in this pretty and quaint setting, so quintessentially British. Up ahead and to the right is Wolff’s Lane. This concludes my short trip through Chawton.

Serenity is the word that best describes her career: and in this Jane Austen may remind one of Gilbert White, who was spending his happy days at Selborne when at Steventon, only about fifteen miles off as the crow flies, she was doing her French exercises and getting her first insight into the little world around her. She has given us a small but very choice portrait gallery of masterpieces. The irresistible Elizabeth, as easy to fall in love with as Scott’s Di Vernon, the alluring if sometimes rather irritating Emma, the worldly but very human Constance—they live and move to-day. You should read Jane Austen after one of the unwholesome, much-boomed, ephemeral novels of to-day, as Dean Stanley read his “Guy Mannering” to take the nasty taste out of his mouth. Jane Austen was buried in Winchester Cathedral, where she is to have at length a worthy memorial.”

Sattelite view of Chawton Cottage with its walled in garden and outbuildings. Click here to see the image of the village from satellite.

Sattelite view of Chawton Cottage with its walled in garden and outbuildings. Click here to see the image of the village from satellite. On the left you can see a narrow footpath between the hedges.

Oh, those Victorians and their simplistic view of Jane Austen. Hope you enjoyed the 112 year old description of Jane’s life as well. In the image below you can see the short trip, which started on the Winchester Road (which started on the left, below A31), then turned left at Jane Austen’s house, and ended at Wolff’s Lane, which turns right and parallels with A31 at the top of the image. Alton would have been a mile up the street and NW of the cottage. Chawton House would have been too much of a walk for Mrs. Austen. I imagine that Edward must have sent his carriage to his mother and sisters when they came to visit.

A Walk Map

View a contemporary watercolor of the village in this article by Joan Austen-Leigh, Chawton Cottage Transfigured

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Steventon and Barton Cottage

Posted in 19th Century England, Architecture, jane austen, Jane Austen's World, Regency Period, Regency style, Regency World, Sense and Sensibility, tagged , , , , , , on June 23, 2011| 13 Comments »

Gentle Readers, With this article we once again benefit from Tony Grant’s expertise as a tour guide in England. He has written a lovely post about Steventon Rectory and its influence on Jane Austen’s description of Barton Cottage in Sense and Sensibility.

Does Barton Cottage, the cottage that Mrs Dashwood, Elinor and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, retreat to and which is located in Devon, just north of Exeter, owe much to Steventon in Hampshire, Jane’s first home?

Elinor ( Emma Thompson) and Mrs. Dashwood (Gemma Jones) in front of Barton Cottage. Sense and Sensibility, 1995

I recently went to Steventon again, the birthplace of Jane Austen and where she spent her formative years until the age of twenty six. Steventon was where she thought she would spend the rest of her life. As soon as she was born she was sent to live with a family in the village. The mother of the household she was sent to became Jane’s wet nurse. Mrs Austen had nothing to do with her children as babies. This might provide an explanation for Jane’s aversion towards her mother as she grew older but it also explains that her attachment to Steventon was not just through her own family and the rectory but it was linked to the wider community and she had very close ties to some of the villagers.

Row of cottages in Steventon. Image @Tony Grant

Steventon is set in a small Hampshire valley about five miles south west of Basingstoke, the nearest large town. When you visit Steventon today there are a few cottages and houses, not dissimilar in number to Jane’s days and a cross roads that has a cluster of old cottages, some of them terraced, set in a beautiful verdant landscape of fields and trees and gently rising downland.

The Dashwood women see Barton Cottage for the first time. Sense and Sensibility, 2008.

“a view of Barton Valley as they entered it gave them cheerfulness. It was a pleasant fertile spot, well wooded and rich in pasture.”

The site of the Rectory at Steventon. You can see the fence that surrounds the pump in back of the tree. Image @Tony Grant

Take the fork at the cross roads along the valley and within a few hundred yards you come to a lane that branches off to the right, almost hidden by bushes and trees. If you can stop at this corner and look into the field on the right, there are two or three tall mature trees , sycamore and ash, and next to one tree is a rustic wooden fenced area with an old water pump in the centre. This is the site of Steventon Rectory, Jane’s old home. The pump is presumed to be the pump the Austens had in their back yard. This rectory had become derelict, and was demolished by Edward Austen Knight when his son, William Knight, took over as vicar of Steventon.  When George Austen retired, he moved Jane, Cassandra and their mother to Bath. James Austen became the new vicar until his death in 1819, when Henry Austen stepped into the position.

The pump. Relic at Steventon Rectory. Illustration by Ellen G. Hill, 1923.

Edward had the new rectory built in the valley in fields on the opposite side of the road.  It still stands today, a fine white house on the sunny side of the valley facing south east.

Steventon House, built by Jane's brother Edward c. 1820-22. Image @Jane Austen Today

Behind the site of the original rectory where Jane lived there is a grassy meadow sloping steeply upwards for a quarter of mile to where her father’s church, St Nicholas, is situated next to a large house where the Digweeds lived. Jane, Cassandra and her brothers often scrambled up the hill behind their rectory to play with the Digweed children.They were some of their childhood friends. There are cultivated fields, meadows and woody areas all around, especially on the top of the hill near the Digweeds home behind the rectory site.

Site of the Steventon Rectory today. The fenced in pump is at left.

“The situation of the house was good. High hills rose immediately behind, and at no great distance on each side; some of which were open downs, the other cultivated and woody.”

The rectory Jane lived in would have been quite spacious because at least seven children lived there, five of her six brothers, herself and her sister Cassandra as well as her mother and father, a couple of servants and for much of the year, sons of some of the local gentry who sent their boys to the Reverend Austen for education and entry to Oxford or Cambridge. Oxford had been the Reverend Austen’s university. Her brother George did not live with the family however because of his disabilities. He was virtually adopted by another family who cared for him. Whether it was for financial gain I am not sure. So the rectory must have been spacious.

“Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact; but as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles. A narrow passage led directly through the house into the garden behind. On each side of the entrance was a sitting room about sixteen feet square; and beyond them were the offices and the stairs. Four bedrooms and two garrets formed the rest of the house.”

Cottage of local stone. Image @Tony Grant

Barton cottage doesn’t resemble the rectory from this description but Jane must have used her knowledge of cottages in the area of Steventon. Jane is very precise about the size of the two sitting rooms, sixteen feet square. The cottage is used in a special way within the novel. She describes it as being , “defective.” This is symbolic of the situation Elinor, Marianne and their mother are in. They are experiencing fractured times and are out of place financially, socially and the cottage they have come to, places them in a different strata of society than they are accustomed to. From the exact dimensions of the sitting rooms Jane Austen gives us, aren’t those rooms too small to socialise in the manner they are used to? It is a,”defective,” place on many levels and it’s not like other cottages.

Cottage without honeysuckle. Image @Tony Grant

Jane would have been very familiar with the traditional country cottage but she makes Barton Cottage different, almost an eye sore, bare of climbing honeysuckle and green painted windows. Mrs Dashwood has plans for it, to change it and develop it. But can these come to fruition? Can the cottage be developed and grow? Can the Dashwood sisters adapt, develop and grow ? Does Barton owe much to Steventon? I would say so. Steventon formed Jane’s knowledge and experience of cottages and she used that knowledge of how cottages are and the meaning in social class and wealth different cottages might portray to incorporate the cottage at Barton into the fabric and meaning of Sense and Sensibility.

Cottage. Image @Tony Grant

Hampshire cottages:
If you ever visit Hampshire and pass through the countryside you will see a variety of types and styles of cottage. Cottages have always been built with local materials readily at hand.

Clay tile roofs. Image @Tony Grant

In the Cotswolds you will find most villages made from Cotswold stone and roofed with tiles sliced from the same stone. This is a creamy yellow colour. Climbing roses, wisteria, lichen and mosses have had plenty of time to insinuate themselves into and on these mellow warm coloured buildings.

Roses round the door. Image @Tony Grant

Hampshire, with its oak, elm and ash forests has many timber frame cottages. Great beams of wood cut from massive oaks have been merely incorporated into the frame and the spaces between the oak beamed framework filled with wattle and daub.

Cottage with wattle and daub. Image @Tony Grant

Wattle and daub being made from woven ash fencing and plastered with a mixture of cow dung, lime and straw. (Click here for a video.)

The oldest building in Winchester is made with wattle and daub. Image @Tony Grant

The roofs are thatched with reeds or wheat stalks. Some have clay tiles where local clay deposits provide the raw material and Hampshire brick works do the work of firing the tiles.

Thatched cottages. Image @Tony Grant

Many buildings are made of flint. Hampshire has large areas of chalk downland. Within the chalk are found nodules of flint.

Winchester College Shield erected on a wall made with flint building material. Click on photo for a larger image. Image @Tony Grant

Nobody is quite sure how flint is formed in the chalk but it is a very hard crystalline rock, glassy in substance. It has been one of the most versatile materials ever.

More thatched cottages. Image @Tony Grant

Stone age man used it for axes, arrow heads, scrapers and knives. It has been used and is still used to build strong walls. Flint lock muskets used tiny bits of flint fixed into their firing mechanism to create a spark which ignited the gunpowder to propel the musket ball down the barrel. Flint can be struck against flint or metal to create a spark to light a fire.

Chawton Cottage. Image @Tony Grant

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