I recently visited the house in College Street, Winchester where Jane Austen died in July 1817. It is open to the public for the first time. Jane herself is buried nearby, in Winchester Cathedral.
The renewed interest in the author is because this year marks the 250th anniversary of her birth in Steventon, Hampshire in 1775. Her links to there, Reading, Basingstoke, Bath, Chawton and Winchester seem to be better known than her connections to Southampton.
In 1806 her brother, the newly married Francis Austen, was in the Navy. After their father’s death in Bath, he suggested that his wife Mary, his mother, sisters Jane and Cassandra and friend Martha Lloyd should share a house together. Southampton was a desirable choice because it was near to Portsmouth, where Frank was based.
Jane had previously spent time in Southampton. When she was seven, she attended Mrs Cawley’s school near the Bargate with sister Cassandra. Southampton, as a busy port, was often one of the first places that diseases and infections from abroad would take hold. Sister Cassandra, Cousin Jane Cooper, and the young Jane became ill with measles and then typhus and were removed.
The second time Jane stayed in Southampton was when she was eighteen. She stayed with her cousin Elizabeth Austen in the St Mary’s Street area.
Jane had her 18th birthday party at the former Dolphin Hotel. It was organised by the mother of Florence Nightingale.
The last time Jane lived here was from 1806 to 1809. A mock-Tudor former pub, the Juniper Berry, is on the site of the house today. Jane enjoyed the fact that the house at 2, Castle Square had a garden.
Jane wrote to her sister Cassandra that “We hear that we are envied our house by many people, and that the garden is the best in town.”
Jane refers to ‘The Beach’ in her letters. This was a stretch of land that stretched between the Town Quay and Cross House. A shelter still stands there, built for passengers waiting to be rowed across by ferrymen from the Itchen Ferry community situated on the Woolston side of the River Itchen. The gateway through God’s House Tower would have been the entrance through which Jane and her family accessed The Beach. Neatley Abbey was a popular place for the Austens to visit.
Some locals did not make a good impression on Jane. Mrs Lance, who lived at Chessel House, Bitterne, was not approved of.
In 1807 Jane wrote to her sister Cassandra: ‘We found only Mrs Lance at home … She was civil and chatty enough, and offered to introduce us to acquaintances in Southampton, which we gratefully declined. They live in a handsome style and are rich, and she seemed to like to be rich. We gave her to understand we were far from being so; she will soon feel therefore that we are not worth her acquaintance.’ Two local roads, Lances Hill and Little Lances Hill, remind us today of the Lance family.
One, slightly salacious story emerges while Jane, Martha Lloyd and her mother are in Southampton. Jane relates a relationship between Dr Mant, the rector of All Saints Southampton and Martha. Dr Mant had been the headmaster of King Edward VI Grammar School. In Jane’s day, it was in French Street, close to Castle Square. Dr Mant had also been a professor of divinity at Oxford, written religious discussion pamphlets and was a charismatic preacher. He had a following of young ladies including Martha. On Tuesday 17 January 1809 Jane wrote to Cassandra: ‘Martha & Dr Mant are as bad as ever; he runs after her in the street …. poor Mrs Mant can stand it no longer; she is retired to one of her married daughters.’
The former Dolphin Hotel, which still stands today in the High Street, was a venue for balls in Jane’s time. Today the first-floor ballroom is named after Jane. Following a winter ball in December 1808, Jane wrote to sister Cassandra:
‘The room was tolerably full & there were perhaps thirty couples of dancers. The melancholy part was to see so many dozen young women standing by without partners & each of them with two ugly naked shoulders!’
Also within easy walking distance of Castle Square was Southampton’s main theatre, the Theatre Royal which Jane attended.
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