Novel Stitching

This spring, Jane Austen’s House Museum will unveil a very special quilt to commemorate Jane Austin’s life at Chawton in an exhibition entitled: Piecing Together Jane Austen. Elizabeth Betts describes a year in the making.

- Elizabeth Betts

This story starts in Chawton, a pretty village in Hampshire. With its sweet thatched cottages, well-tended cricket pitch and old-fashioned signpost, it could easily be a picture on top of a vintage biscuit tin. There’s no through road, and so would only be admired by locals if it weren’t for a famous former resident who, 200 years after her death, continues to pull in thousands of visitors every year from every corner of the globe. The author, a certain Jane Austen, resided in the seventeenth-century cottage in the heart of the village from 1809 until 1817, and from here she wrote or revised most of her novels. Her sister remained in the house until her death in 1845, then it was divided into three dwellings for labourers on the Chawton estate. Fast forward just over 100 years and the Jane Austen Society spotted it was for sale and put an appeal in The Times newspaper. It was purchased by Mr. T E Carpenter who bought it in memory of his son, Phillip, who died in World War II. The museum formally opened in 1949. Welcoming the public since then, Jane Austen’s House Museum gives visitors an insight into Jane’s life at the time.