Steventon, Hampshire
Perhaps the best place to start your tour de Austen is where Jane Austen’s life began in 1775 in the small village of Steventon in Hampshire, located about an hour and a half drive west of London.
The Austen family home is no longer standing, but you can see a lime tree that her brother planted on its property and visit St. Nicholas Church (pictured), where Austen’s father and two of her brothers served as rector. Austen lived in Steventon until age 25, and growing up in the church no doubt influenced characters like Mr. Collins and Edmund Bertram. Plus, every good Austen novel ends with a church wedding to boot!
Chawton, Hampshire
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About 20 miles southeast of Steventon lies the village of Chawton, where Austen wrote or revised all of her novels during the last eight years of her life after her family settled there. There you can visit Jane Austen’s House, now a museum, to see her final home, writing desk, and some of her letters and jewelry. Plus, you can take a self-guided tour through the countryside that Austen loved.
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Box Hill
If you have read or seen Emma, you know Box Hill, the setting of a fateful picnic that serves as a turning point of the novel. Today, you can have your own picnic on the hill while taking in picturesque views of the surrounding Surrey countryside south of London. Be sure to get in a good Austen-style walk while you are there too!
Bath
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“I really believe I shall always be talking of Bath, when I am at home again – I do like it so very much…. Oh! Who can ever be tired of Bath?” protagonist Catherine Morland said upon her visit to the town in Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey
The popular spa town serves not only as the setting of parts of both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion but also was where Jane Austen made her home from 1801 to 1806. Today, you can visit the Pump Room where mineral water is served just as Austen’s characters did, as well as the famous Roman Baths, plenty of antique shops and tea rooms in the town, and the Jane Austen Centre, a museum that commemorates her time there.
Plan your trip for September, and you can take part in the annual Jane Austen Festival, also the record holder for the largest gathering of people dressed in Regency costumes.
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Winchester Cathedral
Kirk Fisher
This 15th-century medieval Anglican Winchester Cathedral, one of the largest in all of Europe, is Austen’s final resting place, where you’ll find a simple grave in the north aisle of the nave with an epitaph that nods to the “extraordinary endowments of her mind.”
Today, an exhibition sits next to her grave, and you can also locate a plaque on the house on College Street where she lived her last days in 1817 after she came to there to seek medical attention. The cathedral is located southwest of London just outside of Southampton.
Chatsworth House
There is “no finer county in England than Derbyshire,” Elizabeth Bennet’s aunt declares in Pride and Prejudice, and that’s just where Chatsworth is located. Some scholars say the home was Austen’s inspiration for Pemberley, Mr. Darcy’s home in the novel, and Elizabeth Bennett visits the estate in the novel before arriving at Pemberley.
The 2005 film version of the novel starring Kiera Knightly was filmed at the estate, depicting Chatsworth as Pemberley, and touring it you will see the grand staircase and sculpture gallery in scenes from the movie (and even Mr. Darcy’s bust!).
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Lyme Regis
The Austen family visited the seaside town of Lyme Regis in southwest England on holiday, and it’s also where a notable scene from Persuasion takes place where Louisa Musgrove falls from the Cobb, a sea wall you can still walk on today (pictured). Austen also features a seaside setting in Sanditon, an incomplete novel, and others works. Be sure to take a beach walk while you are there as well.
Madoline Markham Koonce is the assistant managing editor at VERANDA, where she covers décor, shopping, travel, and culture. She began her career at Southern Living and then worked in community journalism—including serving as editor of three community magazines she helped launch—before joining the team of both VERANDA and Country Living magazines. She has an undergraduate degree in history from Rhodes College (and loves to tap her love of history in her writing) as well as a master’s degree in magazine journalism from the University of Missouri. When she’s not on deadline, you can find her baking or lost in a good book.
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