Hampshire Accommodation

Visit Jane Austen's House preserved in Chawton near Alton
Stroll round the gardens at Jane Austen's House
Jane Austen visited Southampton as a child and lived there briefly later
Jane Austen was happiest in the East Hampshire countryside
The house on College Street where Jane Austen spent her last months
Jane Austen was buried in Winchester Cathedral where you can see her grave
Jane Austen often visited Alton
The Dolphin Hotel in Southampton where Jane Austen attended dances

Jane Austen Biography Trail Hampshire

For Jane Austen fans you can follow a trail around Hampshire to all the places she lived and visited or used as inspiration in her novels. Although the house at Steventon where she was born and spent the first twenty five years of her life is no longer standing, it is a pleasant village to visit and the twelfth century church where her father was a clergyman still stands. The sixteenth century house, The Vyne, just outside Basingstoke was thought to have been visited by Jane and her sister Cassandra to attend dances while living at Steventon, as were the Assembly Rooms in Basingstoke itself. The family left to live in Bath in 1801, but Jane returned to Hampshire with her mother where they resettled after her father's death in Southampton near her brother who was in the Royal Navy. They rented a house in Castle Square and took excursions out to the New Forest to Beaulieu Abbey.

The latter period of Jane's life was spent at Chawton near Alton where they lived for eighteen years. Jane and Cassandra used to take a daily walk to Alton where they would shop and visit their brother who ran a bank and where the post was delivered. The villages of Alton and Chawton have their own Jane Austen trails (available to download from the Jane Austen Alton weblink right). These take you around the everyday places that Jane would have seen or visited such as friends and relative's houses and doctor's or banks. Of course, the main attraction in Chawton is the Jane Austen House Museum. Early in 1817 Jane moved to Winchester when she was referred to a doctor who it was thought would be able to help her with her illness. Unfortunately she died in Winchester with her sister and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

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Jane Austen Tourism Birthplace Steventon Hampshire

Jane Austen spent a great deal of her life (the first 25 years) in Steventon near Basingstoke. The family lived in a late seventeenth century rectory surrounded by fields and countryside where the family grew their own vegetables and Jane would often walk. Unfortunately the rectory was demolished soon after Jane Austen's death. It was here that Jane first felt most settled which enabled her to start writing by drafting Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. However these were not published at that time despite her father offering Pride and Prejudice to a publisher in 1797 who turned it down without reading it!

Steventon Church was well known to Jane as one of the churches where father was rector. She regularly attended the church and several of her relatives are buried in the churchyard. Her brother James took over the parish from his father. One of the parish registers from that time has Jane's signature written inside the front cover on a specimen marriage entry!

The Austen family left Steventon in 1801 when Jane's parents unilaterally decided to move the family to Bath where their father wanted to retire. Jane was not happy about the move and didn't enjoy her time there, finding life too frenetic with regular social engagements which interrupted her ability to write.

Jane Austen Walking Trail Southampton

Jane Austen first visited Southampton when she was just 7 years old and she holidayed here with her sister and cousin. However, she spent more time in the city later in her life and you can find out all about the places she lived and visited by following the Jane Austen Heritage Trail. A leaflet is available from the Tourist Information Office.

Unfortunately Jane's father died while they were living in Bath and after some time her mother decided to return to Hampshire in 1807 and resettled in Southampton where one of Jane's brothers, Frank, was a captain in the Royal Navy. The Austen women: Mrs Austen, Jane, her sister Cassandra and Martha Lloyd who lived with them since her own mother's death moved into a house rented from the Marquess of Lansdowne in Castle Square in Southampton. The house no longer stands and is thought to have been where the Bosun's Locker pub now stands. The Austens lived here from 1807 to 1809 and the square between the houses and pub is thought to have changed little since that time.

Behind the West Quay shopping centre at Arundel Circus is where the Spa Gardens fountain and botanical gardens once stood and where Jane Austen and her family took their daily walk. Another popular route that is likely to have been part of the Austens' walk is along town walls at Town Quay to The Platform at the end of Winkle Street. It is believed that while in Southampton Jane Austen attended dances at The Long Rooms which used to stand just off the Esplanade and The Dolphin Hotel which continues to act as a hotel on the High Street. The ballroom with its bow windows on the first floor was the scene of the 1808 winter assembly which Jane Austen attended. It is also thought that Jane's brother, Frank, brought her to a dance here to celebrate her eighteenth birthday in 1793.

Jane Austen House Museum Chawton

After a brief spell in Southampton after retuning to Hampshire from Bath, Jane moved to Chawton with her mother, elder sister Cassandra and her sister-in-law Martha Lloyd. They lived in what had been the bailiffs' house on the Chawton Estate. Jane's brother, Edward Knight, who had been adopted by wealthy relatives at the age of sixteen, inherited their estates at Godmersham Park near Canterbury in Kent and Chawton Great House in Hampshire. He was able to let his mother and two sisters, Cassandra and Jane, to live in Chawton Cottage rent free. Moving back to the Hampshire countryside was a huge relief to Jane and meant that she was finally able to settle down to her writing seriously after the upset and moves to Bath and Southampton. It was here that she assumed a business-like manner to her writing and where she revised and completed the majority of her writing - finishing off Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey and writing Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion that were written entirely here.

The seventeenth century red brick house where she lived is now the Jane Austen's House Museum. Here Jane spent the last eight years of her life. You can visit the house and garden which has changed little over the years. Rooms are decorated in the period style with several personal items and furniture that Jane would actually have used including the parlour and writing desk where she would write. Dotted around the house are several letters in Jane's own hand and there is a patchwork quilt made Jane, Cassandra and their mother.

You can pick up Jane Austen related gifts at the house as well as checking out the small but comprehensive book shop which has biographies, films and of course the whole range of Jane Austen novels themselves. Chawton is a small village set in the heart of the East Hampshire countryside. It's well worth having a stroll along the street lined with traditional thatched cottages. Jane's sister, Cassandra, and mother are buried in the churchyard in Chawton but it's Winchester Cathedral you ll have to visit for Jane's grave.

Jane Austen's House is open: March-May daily 10.30am-4.30pm. June-August daily 10am-5pm. Sept-1 Jan daily 10.30am-4.30pm. Closed 25-26 December. Jan-Feb weekends only 10.30am-4.30pm. Jane Austen's House Museum, Chawton, Alton, Hampshire GU34 1SD. Tel: 01420 83262.

Jane Austen's Grave Winchester Cathedral

One of the most famous people to have been buried at Winchester Cathedral is Jane Austen. Although as was the tradition for clergyman's family not much is made of her fame that she had attained even in her own lifetime on the inscription itself.

She had travelled to Winchester to see a doctor in the hope that he could provide a cure, but she finally succumbed as a result of Addison's disease, on 18 July 1817 at the age of 41.

Her grave is in the North Aisle in the Cathedral as a consequence of her clergyman father's right to bury members of his family in the Cathedral.