Showing posts with label #Chawton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #Chawton. Show all posts

Monday 19 March 2012

Jane Austen's House at Chawton


Today I paid another visit to Jane Austen's home in Chawton. The village is situated well away from the main road and still has a peaceful old world atmosphere. The road leading to Jane's cottage has not changed much since her time. This row of thatched cottages defines the length and curve of the road.

It was sunny and in all the gardens plants are stretching out green shoots at a miraculous rate. In Jane's garden daffodils and violets are in flower and there is the promise of a fine display of bluebells in another month. New since my last visit is the flowerbed of dye plants. It has ten sections, so ten different plants from which to make dyes for brightening up clothes and ribbons.    

Close to the outbuildings at the back of the house, is a bed of medicinal plants. Looking at these, I respect their virtues but feel a slight shiver at a world without modern medicine. There are also herbs such as rosemary and lavender with their many uses and a very old fig tree.


The various outbuildings served in essential jobs and for storage. The open door leads to the Bakehouse, with its wide chimney and brick oven. It also contains a large copper where clothes and household linen could be washed. The well is right by the door. There is an underground storage room, which would be cool and so provisions like salted pork could be kept there through the winter. [Pork was only eaten when there was an 'r' in the month.]



Coming round the side of the house, there is the main kitchen, a large and airy room, although perhaps when meat was roasting on a turning spit over the open fire the air in there was smoky and little sputters of hot fat made working difficult. This photo was taken on a previous visit, hence the roses.

     In the main kitchen

Inside the main house the rooms are large and the furniture is elegant, although there is only one padded seat - the sofa. The pianoforte is smaller than a modern piano but how essential it was for entertainment. It is easy to imagine the daily life of the family with its household duties. During the evenings as they sat in the drawing room, one of them would read and the others would sew.
The little table on which Jane is supposed to have written her novels, stands by the window in the dining room. It is battered and shabby, yet it is the most respected item in the house, everyone marvelling at it and then at Jane herself, whose existence was constantly bound up in her large family and the daily duties of domestic life, yet her perception of human nature is so profound that the stories she created are loved and admired across the world. That is evident from a glance through the Visitors' Book at Chawton Cottage.

And now, to round off my day, I shall select one of her novels to reread....



Saturday 19 September 2009

All things Jane Austen - A Regency day out at Chawton


On a bright and beautiful September morning I took my French friend down to Chawton. Jane Austen's cottage and garden looked their best in the sunshine. The garden was full of colourful flowers and the peaceful atmosphere helped to capture a sense of what it must have been like to live there two hundred years ago.


You enter through a door surrounded by late-flowering roses, to find the interior full of items that bring Jane vividly before you. Her topaz cross and a delightful blue bead bracelet, her small writing table, the letters and papers concerning her books, the fine needlework she produced, all create a sense of her daily life in this home.

On that day, Chawton House, "the Great House" as the Austen ladies called it, was open to the public. This complemented the impressions gained at the cottage, of life as lived by the gentry in a less hurried era.


                                                 Chawton House - 'The Great House'


Diana demonstrates the language of the fan to her beau


A display of Regency era dancing by the Winchester Dance Group

We were fortunate to see a display of Regency dancing - a waltz and several quadrilles, performed in costume. Even more fortunate, we were able to join in the dancing at the end of the display, but I fear we did not perform with as much skill as our teachers.

Diana, the lady in the white dress in the photo, is using her fan to communicate with Regency gentleman David Caldo. Diana gave us a lesson in 'The language of the Fan'.