Chawton
| Chawton | |
| Hampshire | |
|---|---|
 Jane Austen's House, Chawton | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SU710373 |
| Location: | 51°7’58"N, -0°59’19"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 445 (2011) |
| Post town: | Alton |
| Postcode: | GU34 |
| Dialling code: | 01420 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | East Hampshire |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
East Hampshire |
Chawton is a village in Hampshire, at the edge of the south Downs (and within the National Park). It is famed as the home of Jane Austen for the last eight years of her life.
There is a tea shop opposite Jane Austen's house called 'Cassandra's Cup': named after Jane Austen's sister. Just down the road from this is a pub called The Greyfriar which has an oak-beamed traditional bar.
History
Chawton's recorded history begins in the Domesday Book of 1086. The book records that the manor held nineteen free residents, eight smallholders, six slaves and woodland with fifty pigs.[1]
In the 13th century, there was a royal manor house. The owner, John St John, served as deputy to King Edward I in Scotland. Henry III visited the manor on over forty occasions.
The descendants of John Knight, who built the present Chawton House at the time of the Spanish Armada (1588), added to it and modified the landscape in ways that reflect changes in politics, religion and taste. One of those descendants was Elizabeth Knight, whose progresses were marked by the ringing of church bells and whose two husbands both had to adopt her surname.[2] Later in the 18th century, Jane Austen's brother Edward Austen Knight (who had been adopted by the Knights) succeeded, and in 1809 was able to move his mother and sisters to a cottage in the village.
Chawton never developed into a settlement of substance, ‘possibly because the lords of the manor wished to keep the area for themselves’.[3] Chawton’s private parliamentary enclosure took place in 1740-1 when a bad harvest followed a severe winter and eighteen food riots were recorded over large parts of the country.[4] However, Chawton's Inclosure Act was mostly about sheep and merely confirmed of an agreement already made.[5] There is no mention at Chawton of encroachments, peasants’ cottages, or peasants’ rights of common forage and the rest. This was entirely an arrangement between the owners of the land for their individual benefit.[6] From lists in Leigh’s book of Chawton Manor, one might have expected over thirty families to have held an interest, but all but one were already gone, not just from the Commons, but, soon, from the village entirely. ‘A thick cultural and social wedge was inserted between the improving husbandmen, the better sort of the parish, and the poor.’[7]
Enclosure was nothing new in Chawton. In 1605, a court held by John Knight recognised that for the last thirty or forty years a ‘great part’ of the commons had been enclosed by tenants with the consent of the lord. However, these tenants still kept the same number of sheep on the reduced common land to everyone’s detriment. The enclosed lands at Chawton in 1740 came from the 312 acres of Common and from 309 acres made up of seven common fields: Ridgefield, Southfield, Northfield, Upper and Lower Eastfield, Whitedown and Winstreetfield. The lord, Thomas Knight, newly in position, did very well. His existing local estate already comprised fifteen houses and 1,569 acres: 734 of arable land, 108 of pasture, 56 meadow, 615 woodland and 55 rough heath. Now, through enclosure, he added 156 acres from the common and 143 acres from the common fields, 48 per cent of the available total, and almost 2,000 acres altogether in Hampshire.[8] Knight’s allotment was increased by the herbage of all the highways on the Common, and, because he was the lord, ‘free liberty’ by June 1742 to ‘sell, cut down, grub up, take, cart, and carry away’ all the timber trees, pollard trees, bushes and wood, anywhere on the Common for which his workmen could enter any allotment at any time.
Parish church
St Nicholas' Church is the only church in Chawton. A church has stood on the site in Chawton since at least 1270 when it was mentioned in a diocesan document. The church suffered a disastrous fire in 1871 which destroyed all but the chancel. The rebuilt church was designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield and is now listed Grade II*.[9]
The churchyard was reserved for burial for the Knight family, and the graves include that of Jane Austen's mother and sister, both called Cassandra.[10]
About the village
- Main article: Jane Austen's House Museum
Chawton Cottage, Jane Austen's house and garden are open to the public.
On Winchester Road is the Village Hall.
Chawton House
- Main article: Chawton House
Chawton House, the 400-year-old Grade II* listed Elizabethan manor house that once belonged to Jane Austen's brother and 275 acres of land, has been restored as part of a major international project to establish the new Centre for the Study of Early Women's Writing, 1600–1830. It houses a collection of over 9,000 volumes, together with some related manuscripts. Visitors can see the relationship between the library, the house, the estate and a working farm of the 18th and early 19th centuries.[11]
In 1992 a 125-year lease on the house was purchased for £1.25 million by a foundation established by Sandra Lerner, co-founder of Cisco Systems.[12]
Sport and leisure
Cricket: Chawton Cricket Club,[13] whose home ground is the village green, beside Gosport Road.
The green also has a playground. Nearby is a set of allotments.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Chawton) |
- Chawton Bellringers
- The Jane Austen Society of the United Kingdom
- Chawton Cricket Club
- The Greyfriar
References
- ↑ Munby, Domesday Book, 23-25.
- ↑ "EMLS 6.3 (January, 2001]: 9.1-16 [Chawton House Library". http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/06-3/chawton.htm.
- ↑ Montgomery, Chawton, p. 4.
- ↑ Rudé, George, The Crowd in History, A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730-1748 (John Wiley, New York 1964), p. 36.
- ↑ Private Act, 14 George II, c. 12 (HL/PO/PB/1/1740/14G2n44). Also Hampshire Record Office, 155M89/1.
- ↑ Heal, Ropley's Legacy, Chapter 7.
- ↑ Hindle, Steve, ‘A sense of place? Becoming and belonging in the rural parish, 1550-1650’, in Shepard, Alexandra, and Withington, Phil, edited, Communities in early modern England, Networks, place, rhetoric (Manchester University Press 2000) pp. 19-49.
- ↑ Leigh, Chawton Manor, p. 46.
- ↑ National Heritage List 1380314: Church of St Nicholas (Grade II* listing)
- ↑ St Nicholas Center Gazeteer
- ↑ "Chawton House Library". http://www.chawton.org/.
- ↑ "A Writer at Large: Sandy Lerner's Persuasion". The Independent on Sunday. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20030720/ai_n12741978. Template:Dead link
- ↑ "Chawton Cricket Club". http://www.chawton.cc/.
- Heal, Chris: 'Ropley's Legacy, The ridge enclosures, 1709 to 1850: Chawton, Farringdon, Medstead, Newton Valence and Ropley and the birth of Four Marks' (Chattaway and Spottiswood 2021)
- Hurst, Jane: ‘Baigens, Chawton’: Hampshire Field Club and Archaeology Society Newsletter, 44, Autumn 2005
- Leigh, William Austen; Knight, Montagu George: 'Chawton Manor and its Owners, A Family History' (Smith, Elder, 1911)
- Montgomery, Roy: 'The village of Chawton and the parish of St Nicholas' (Hampshire Genealogical Society, No. 47)