Jane Austen's Last Home Opens for 250th Celebrations
Jane Austen's Last Home Opens for 250th Celebrations
"I am going to Winchester,” Jane Austen wrote to her friend Anne Sharp on May 22, 1817, about visiting the family surgeon, “for some weeks to see what Mr Lyford can do farther towards re-establishing me in tolerable health.”
With her sister Cassandra, she was heading to 8 College Street in the city, located in the southeast English county of Hampshire. “Our lodgings are very comfortable,” Austen wrote to her nephew Edward on May 27. “We have a neat little Draw(ing)-room with a Bow-window.” Sadly, less than two months later, on July 17, she died.
Courtesy Fine Lines Illustrations
Amid the myriad events organized to celebrate Jane Austen’s 250th birthday this year is the chance to visit this final home—now owned by the Winchester College boarding school—which is opening to the public for the first time.
According to historian and former Winchester Headmaster Timothy Hands, “Number 8 College Street is largely of eighteenth-century construction. Jane and Cassandra had taken rooms on the first floor, accessed through the front door and a no-longer-existent staircase. The room at the back of the house may have been Jane’s bedroom, though the exact date of this rear extension is uncertain. The bow window remains, and tradition, emboldened by common sense, places Jane’s final days on a sofa on the opposite wall, next to the fireplace.”
The building became a sweet shop for many years until the school bought it in 1893. Most recently, it has been a private residence for a member of the school’s staff (who had a notice in the window explaining this to hopeful tourists who had probably already visited nearby Winchester Cathedral, where Austen is buried under a memorial stone).
“Few authors survive the centuries to find new readers generations after their own,” said Rebecca Romney, co-founder of Type Punch Matrix and author of the recently published Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend. “But when they do, it’s because their books still speak to us. They feel fresh and relevant, even when they are set in times and places completely foreign to us. Jane Austen accomplishes this in her extraordinary realism and dedication to exploring the ordinary lives of women.”
This summer, the school will host an exhibition about Austen and Winchester at Number 8, including manuscripts and first editions of her novels, a specially commissioned film, and objects from the collections of Winchester College. Winchester Cathedral will be displaying the original manuscript of Austen’s 1808 poem “To the Memory of Mrs Lefroy.” Other items associated with Austen will be on display in Treasury, the school’s museum, from May until the end of this year.
“Through displays and artifacts, visitors will learn about Jane’s connections with Winchester and the story of her last days,” said Catherine Fabian, the marketing and engagement lead at the school. “No fewer than eight of Jane’s nephews were pupils at Winchester College, and the school is often mentioned in her correspondence. In one of her last letters, Jane looked forward to a visit from Charles Austen, then in his first year at Winchester. Despite her failing health, Jane continued to write, composing her last poem just three days before her death. Her final journey was movingly described by Cassandra, who watched the funeral procession from the windows of Number 8.”
