IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Chawton, ALTON, GU34 1SJ

The Manor House on a rare public open day.

Pevsner says that the best thing at Chawton House is the Stables. These date from 1591.

Chawton House was one of the homes of Edward Austen Knight, one of the brothers of Jane Austen, who had been adopted by rich relatives the Knights as they did not have a son of their own. It was through his ownership that he was able to offer one of the houses on his estate to his widowed mother and two sisters. That house in the village has become known as Jane Austen’s House. Chawton House is now home to the Chawton House Library, a unique collection of books focusing on women's writing in English from 1600 to 1830. Even the back of the building, quite unusually, is impressive.

Chawton House was one of the homes of Edward Austen Knight, one of the brothers of Jane Austen, who had been adopted by rich relatives the Knights as they did not have a son of their own. It was through his ownership that he was able to offer one of the houses on his estate to his widowed mother and two sisters. That house in the village has become known as Jane Austen’s House. Chawton House is now home to the Chawton House Library, a unique collection of books focusing on women's writing in English from 1600 to 1830. This is the view from the kitchen.

Chawton House and Church are a little way out of the village. The house at the end of the drive here was originally Elizabethan but has been altered since. On the left are the stables, dating from 1591. In 1781, Thomas Knight II inherited Chawton House, 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. The Austens had six sons and two daughters, and the Knights adopted the third eldest son, Edward. Edward Austen Knight eventually took over management of the estate, and in 1809 he offered a house in the village to his mother and two sisters Cassandra and Jane, and it was this that brought Jane Austen to Chawton. The house is now Chawton House Library whose mission is ".. to promote study and research in early English women's writing; to protect and preserve Chawton House, an English manor house dating from the Elizabethan period; and to maintain a rural English working manor farm of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for the benefit of everyone."

Chawton House was one of the homes of Edward Austen Knight, one of the brothers of Jane Austen, who had been adopted by rich relatives the Knights as they did not have a son of their own. It was through his ownership that he was able to offer one of the houses on his estate to his widowed mother and two sisters. That house in the village has become known as Jane Austen’s House. Chawton House is now home to the Chawton House Library, a unique collection of books focusing on women's writing in English from 1600 to 1830. This is the view from the south lawn.

Chawton House is situated to the south of the eponymous village surrounded by parkland and next to Image] It was once the home to Jane Austen's brother, Edward who changed his surname to Knight in order to inherit as the "adopted son" of the childless Knight family who had owned this house for centuries. The house dates from c.1580 and there is a fireback dated 1588 with the initials I K (for John Knight). Chawton House was extended in the mid C17th, and further extensions were added in the following two centuries. See its EH Grade II* listing here http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1093975&searchtype=mapsearch This view is looking along its drive from its gates on Winchester Road. It now houses Chawton House Library http://www.chawtonhouse.org "an internationally respected research and learning centre for the study of early women's writing from 1600 to 1830." as it says on its website. The house is also available to hire for weddings etc. http://www.chawtonhouse.org/?page_id=43828

The best bit of any evening out- the ice cream stall

Chawton House was one of the homes of Edward Austen Knight, one of the brothers of Jane Austen, who had been adopted by rich relatives the Knights as they did not have a son of their own. It was through his ownership that he was able to offer one of the houses on his estate to his widowed mother and two sisters. That house in the village has become known as Jane Austen’s House. Chawton House is now home to the Chawton House Library, a unique collection of books focusing on women's writing in English from 1600 to 1830.