THE WOMBLES OF WIMBLEDON COMMON

Woodland on the common.

The Windmill. it was in a house near here Baden Powel lived for a while.

The Wombles

Julie Andrew's old pad.

Golf on the Common. there are two golf courses, London Scottish and the Royal Wimbledon.



Elisabeth Beresford, the author of The Wombles.

Abigail with some joggers going past.

The common has a number of ponds and small lakes.

Has anybody outside this green and pleasant land heard of ,The Wombles?

Today it is raining. The BBC website shows the symbols for heavy rain with intermittent showers. That means it is raining all the time, sometimes less heavy than at other times. Heavy rain, you should see it. You should hear it. The sound is something else. Tomorrow is forecast the same. However on Wednesday it's different, the forecast says heavy rain ALL the time.

Unbelievably, two days ago we had a heat wave with clear blue skies.The temperature was 26 degrees centigrade and more.

On Saturday it was hot so I decided to take Abigail, my youngest, for a cycle ride on Wimbledon Common beneath the cool leaves and foliage of the wooded areas on the common.

Wimbledon Common is famous for the Wombles.

It's also famous for a lot of other things too.

In the 18th century it was the haunt of highwaymen who held up carriages on route to the south, Portsmouth and Southampton. It was also, because of it's seclusion, a place where gentry, miffed with each other, held duels, "by gad sir you bounder!"

Julius Caesar was reputed to have built a camp on the common on his second invasion of these islands in 54BC. But that is thought to be not true. The earth works on the common, which people thought was Caesars camp, was probably an Iron Age hill fort. The fact the Roman Road Stane Street ran from London Bridge to Chichester on the South Coast, went close to Wimbledon Common, may have suggested it was a Roman fort.

In the 17th century Wimbledon Common was used as a training ground for Charles II's Tangier Regiment.

The emancipator, William Wilberforce, in the 19th century, lived next to the common.

The Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, who lived in Putney, used to frequent one of my drinking places, the Rose and Crown, on the edge of the common. They do great beer there by the way.

There are a number a small hills on the common. They are man made. When the London Underground system was being built in the late 1800s , the earth they removed when digging the tunnels was transported to Wimbledon Common, hence the hills.

King George V used to play golf on the Royal Wimbledon Golf Course and

Baden Powel wrote Scouting for Boys in a house next to the windmill.

During the Ist World War the common was used by the army as a massive training camp for rifle regiments. They had many rifle ranges set up on the common. During the Ist World War it was also an airfield for the Royal Flying Corps which later became the RAF. The airfield was used to protect London from bombing by the German zeppelins.

Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton used to live in Merton Place at the bottom of the hill from the common.

The writer, Robert Graves, was born and brought up in a road next to Wimbledon Green on the common.

Julie Andrews lived in a pink house here before she hit super stardom and moved to Hollywood.

Of course , to one side of the common the famous tennis courts are situated too.

However it's the Wombles that the common is REALLY FAMOUS for.

Here is some information. All will become clear.

THE POWER OF KIDS TV!!!!!!!


"The Wombles are fictional pointy-nosed, furry creatures that live in burrows, where they help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in useful and ingenious ways. Wombles were created by author Elisabeth Beresford, originally appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968. The characters later became nationally famous in the mid 1970s as a result of a popular BBC children's television show using stop motion animation. A number of spin-off novelty songs also became major hits in the British music charts.

Their motto is "Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish." This "green" message was a reflection of the ecology movement of the 1970s. Although Wombles live in every country in the world, the stories focus on the life of the burrow in Wimbledon Common in London, England. "

Jane Austen and Vicars

Farringdon Church, two miles from Chawton. Jane often walked here and knew the vicar well. She probably attended services here.

Steventon Church, where Jane's father the Reverend Austen was the vicar. Jane was christened here and attended services every week.

This is rather an intriguing sign. It is the sign outside the church in Farringdon."NORTHANGER BENEFICE," no less.

Chawton Parish Church.

St Nicholas.

The main church in Alton.

Alton was the local town to Chawton and Jane often went here shopping. She would have known this church.

A print showing Southampton High Street in the 18th century. All Saints, Dr Mant's church, is the Greek porticoed building on the left.

I'm not sure Jane would approve but I'm sure some of her vicar characters would not be averse to some ,"rumpy pumpy," don't you think.

The new Vicar was up early one Sunday morning, walking around his new parish, after leaving his wife in bed with the Sunday papers, her cup of tea, and a pack of cigarettes.One of the old villagers came up to him and said. “Good morning, Vicar, how be you and the wife?”

The Vicar said, “Good morning my man, I am fine, the wife is fine also. I left her in bed smoking.”
The villager said, “Arr, Vicar, that’s the way to fuck ‘em!”

(Mr and Mrs Norris from Mansfield Park, when they first moved into the living of Mansfield? Perhaps not! )

Jane Austen's relationship with vicars was an integral part of her own life, her father and two of her brothers, James and Henry were vicars. Henry became a curate in various parishes after his bank failed. Many of the most prominent and sometimes important characters in her novels are vicars. Mr Elton in Emma, and Mr Norris, who we never meet and Edward Bertram in Mansfield Park are amongst them.

Being a vicar in the 18th century was a lower middle class occupation. Vicars and vicars wives and families were a specific strata of society. It was considered a way of making a living with property and income attached.

When Emma is discussing with Harriet the suitability of Mr Elliot as a suitor, her considerations are,

" He had a comfortable home for her, and Emma imagined a very sufficient income; for though the vicarage at Highbury as not large, he was known to have some independent property;......"

In Mansfield Park, Mr Norris, never appears, he is merely spoken of by his wife. His character seems to be a foil by which the personality and character of Mrs Norris is accentuated even more sharply.He dies early in the novel . When he is dead Mrs Norris,

"consoled herself for the loss of her husband by considering that she could do very well without him..."

That seems to be a chilling comment. For a person to be unloved and not cared for to that extent by somebody who purports to love them, is quite horrific. Mrs Norris shows her total self interest to a degree, with that statement. Mr Norris may well have been the sort of vicar who only cared about house and income but he doesn't deserve that level of indifference from his wife.

Edmund Bertram, on the other hand, is different. If a definition of a good christian is to judge them by their actions not just their speech, then Edmund portrays what a good christian and vicar should be.

Edmund's thoughtfulness towards Fanny and the quick actions he takes to make her comfortable and the care he shows her are all traits which make him material for a truly christian vicar.

When Fanny is pining after her brother and childhood playmate,William, Edmund, immediately supplies her with writing materials and sees that Fanny's letter is franked and posted.

" If that be all your difficulty, I will furnish you with paper and every other material, and you may write your letter whenever you choose."

Edmund puts himself out considerably for Fanny when he exchanges one of his own three horses for a horse more suitable for Fanny to ride, so she may get exercise.Nothing is too much for him.

Edmund requires a home and some income though. His father is acutely aware of this,when Tom, the elder, reprobate, brother, has squandered a proportion of his fathers wealth on betting and gambling and Sir Thomas is then unable to offer Edmund the living of Mansfield immediately after Mr Norris's death.

" you have robbed Edmund for ten, twenty, thirty years, perhaps for life."

We all need to have food and shelter and clothing on our backs.

The passage in Mansfield Park that really sets out the difference between the materially interested vicar and the true Christian is the discussion between Mary Crawford and Edmund when Miss Crawford finds out that Edmund is to become a vicar. You can immediately see the change in attitude Mary has to Edmund from that moment onwards.

Edmund relates a sort of manifesto about what he thinks a clergyman should be and should not be,

"A clergyman cannot be in a high state or fashion. he must not head mobs, or set the tone in dress. But I cannot call that situation nothing, which has the charge of all that is of the first importance to mankind, individually or collectively considered temporally or eternally- which was the guardianship of religion and morals and consequently from the manners which result from their influence."

Edmund himself is a great example of ,"the manners which result."

Jane throughout her life had first hand knowledge of clergymen. Her father and brothers amongst many. She knew what was good and bad about the profession. She had real life examples to provide her with evidence.

In some of her letters written while living in Castle Square, Southampton, she mentions, Dr Mant, who was the rector of All Souls, a church in Southampton High Street near The Bargate.

Dr Mant had been an Oxford Fellow like her own father, George Austen. Dr Mant was a super star in the firmament of the clergy, having written influential books and pamphlets about theology. He was also a charismatic preacher and Jane often mentions listening to his sermons. He also had been the headmaster of King Edwards Grammar School in Southampton for a number of years. However, Jane suggests a salacious side to him. How much a slightly cruel joke, pointed at her best friend Martha Lloyd, or how much truth there is behind it, it is impossible to ascertain. Jane relates how Mrs Mant left Southampton with her children for a while to get away from the attention her husband, religious super star, that he was, seemed to be attracting.

To Cassandra Austen Tuesday 17th January 1809 from Castle Square,

"Martha & Dr Mant are as bad as ever;he runs after her in the street to apologise for having spoken to a gentleman, while she was near him the day before.- Poor Mrs Mant can stand it no longer; she is retired to one of her married daughters."

Dr Mant was obviously a clergyman on a steep successful career slope. But fine words and sermons don't make Dr Mant, Edmund Bertram's idea of a true vicar. Dr Mant had been a headmaster and given some of his life to educating children which is a giving profession and requires the understanding and development of others. But which sort of vicar was he truly, an Edmund or a Mr Elliot. We cannot tell. He had a very interested following though.

I am sure Jane got her understanding of what a good clergyman is from the experience of her own father and brothers, but did they also provide some of the attributes of Mr Norris and Mr Elliot?

After all, George Austen, Jane's father, retired as vicar of Steventon and moved to Bath. Bath, the 18th century equivalent of Blackpool or Coney Island.

The Cobb and The Undercliff at Lyme Regis

Walking in The Undercliff. A sheer cliff face in front of us.

The wind nearly blew us off the Cobb.

"Granny's Teeth," also known as the steps Louisa Musgrove jumped down from.

A view of Lyme looking back from The Cobb.

Half way there. We walked for eight miles from Lyme along The Undercliff to Seaton, which is a small village across the border from Dorset in Devon.

Forcing our way through the undergrowth.

I think this says 1826. Your eye sight might be better than mine. It was carved here by the engineers who repaired the Cobb years after Jane died.

A view of the upper and the lower Cobb.The Cobb itself twists to the right after passing these fishermens huts. You can see the top of one of the other sets of steps in the bottom right of this picture.


A view of The Undercliff from the Cobb. It is recorded, not in Jane's own letters but in letters written by either one of her brothers or one of her nieces, that Jane walked in the Undercliff.

The Cobb looks like a black twisting beast in stormy weather. It feels and looks savage.

Two friends of mine riding the back of, "the beast."

The top part of the Cobb slopes outwards towards the sea. It's not always easy to keep your footing.

We got to the end.

It depends on the weather conditions. The Cobb at Lyme can look and behave like an evil spirited leviathan;a Moby Dick. It's a savage beast. At other times it can be a gentle, peaceful and calm creature.

Jane Austen used the Cobb at Lyme for the setting of an integral scene in her novel, Persuasion. The accident on The Cobb, to Louisa Musgrove, in Persuasion, brings Anne Elliot to the fore. She is looked to by Captain Wentworth and the others to take charge.

John Fowles, who lived in Lyme for most of his life, used Lyme , The Cobb and The Undercliff as  the settings for his novel ,The French Lieutenants Woman.These topographical elements of Lyme are like a group of brooding characters within Fowles' novel and shape the action as much as the human characters.The undercliff is  where Sarah Woodruff , the heroine of The French Lieutenants Woman, walked on her own, creating gossip and tittle tattle amongst the stiff spinsters who kept their disapproving, hawk like eyes on her every movement. It is a special place.

Lyme is the place that Mary Anning, in the early 1800's,  discovered the first Ichthyosaur. The cliffs at Lyme reveal  fossils from the Jurassic period, 190 million years ago. Many of her finds are now in The Natural History Museum in Kensington. Lyme has become a fossil hunters paradise.

Myself and some of my friends wanted a weekend away so we decided on Lyme.  We tend to go to places for the local beer and perhaps the beautiful scenery rather than the literary connections. We enjoyed some of the excellent eating establishments in Lyme looking out over the harbour and the cobb and also some of the pubs in the narrow lanes and back streets of the town. We walked for miles along the undercliff from Lyme to Seaton. Much of the walk was under a dense rich canopy of tall growing, ash and lime. It is about an eight mile walk and the walking is quite tiring. At times we had to wend our way through long grasses and along twisting narrow paths.We couldn't always see far ahead. I think this always makes a walk harder. If you can see into the distance that gives you a target. We had to keep going at a steady pace. It wasn't an easy walk. 

As it's name suggests, The Undercliff, is situated on the side and underneath the top of the cliffs that stretch along the Dorset Coast.It is a world heritage site and recognised by UNESCO. There have been many landslides along the coast here. It has been active for 20,000 years. More recent landslips have been recorded in 1775, 1828, 1839 and in 1840. The so called, "Great Slip," occurred in 1839 and was recorded in great detail. These slips happen because of the geological strata of the rocks that form the coast at Lyme. Chalk and sandstone, which are pervious and allow rainwater to percolate through them, sit on top of clays and limestone which are not pervious. The water percolating through the above rocks acts as a lubricant when it reaches the impervious clays and this can cause the top layers to slip over the bottom layers.These slips have created platforms and shelving along the face of the cliff.

The Undercliff is south facing. It has sea breezes but it also has the protection of the cliffs above.This creates a unique environment. It is sheltered and it gets most of the days light. It is a micro climate different from the sea before it and different from the land above and behind it. It is  verdant, almost like a small rainforest.

8th MAY VE Day celebrations

The 8th May. It is 65 years since victory over Europe was achieved.

Here are some pictures of that time.

Waiting for a bus in Whitehall.

Young ladies in the East End. They were tough, full of earthy humour and bomb proof.Do you get their sense of humour? The morning after the night before.

St Paul's celebrating. Putting a finger UP to the Luftwaffe.

Putting flags up in their garden to celebrate.Crowds in Piccadilly Circus. Notice the statue of Eros is boarded over to protect it from bomb blasts. Singing and dancing in the streets. Having a celebratory drink in a local pub.

Dancing near Regent Street. Churchill with the Royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

My family, 1944. My grandmother , great grandmother, Aunt Marjorie, my grandfather and my mum. My uncle Howard had been killed earlier that year in a bombing raid over Southampton. My aunt Marjorie in the backgarden. Notice the vegetables and fruit trees. One of the slogans during the war, was "DIG FOR BRITAIN." It meant dig, to grow your own food but also to dig air raid shelters to provide protection from bomb blasts. Here's my mum with the Anderson shelter in the background. It was made of corrugated iron sheets for the walls and the roof, a hole dug 4 or 5 feet into the ground and the earth piled back on top of the roof and walls. It sounds a little makeshift but it worked. Obviously an Anderson shelter wouldn't save anybody from a direct hit but they were effective as a protection from bombs landing nearby and the ensuing blast and shrapnel.

Mummers and May Day celebrations

I've just read an interesting entry on Mary Simonson's Blog ( Austen Inspired Fan Fiction by Mary Simonson)about mummers and May Day celebrations here in England.

I live not far from Wimbledon Common and Wimbledon Green. Every Easter and every May Day, Mummers and Morris dancers perform outside the Crooked Billett and Hand in Hand Pubs next to Wimbledon Green on the edge of the common. You will find Morris men in action in English villages throughout the Summer months.

Three years ago some children and parents from my school, that run a morris dancers society called the, Spring Grove Morris Men, performed on The Green. They have a web site called Spring Grove Morris Men. They offer morris dancing lessons for free, if you are interested.

Some of my family and many of my friends were in the crowd watching them.

Me and my mate, Clive, went to Chawton.

During August last year, an old school friend of mine, Clive, came over from Hamilton Ontario to spend two weeks with Marilyn, my wife and my family.


Clive arrived on the 7th August. I met him off his flight at Heathrow and drove him home to Wimbledon in South London by way of the M25, the motorway that circles London. The traffic is so bad on the M25 it has been called Britains largest car park by some humorous wag.


One of the things I wanted to do while Clive was over here was to show him Jane Austen's cottage at Chawton.

We set off for Hampshire and Chawton the following morning.From where I live Chawton is about 45 miles due south along the A3 to Guildford. A very pleasant drive over the Hogsback and past Farnham and along the A32. Fields, woodlands , valleys and rivers pass by.The imposing structure of Guildford Cathedral high up on it's hill could be seen on the left as we drove south. It was built in the 1950's and is one of Britains newer cathedrals but it is still magnificent with it's great tall golden statue of the Archangel Michael surmounting it's central tower. The views from the Hogsback looking over the rolling Surrey country side are wonderful. Jane Austen often travelled from Chawton to London on this same route. She wrote about the Hogsback and it's marvelous vistas in her letters.Travelling to London in a curricle with her brother Henry on Thursday 20th may 1813, she writes , "the weather was delightful the greatest part of the day,Henry found it too warm & talked of it's being close sometimes, but to my capacity it was perfection.- I never saw the Country from the Hogsback so advantageously."


Clive and I saw the country from the Hogsback advantageously too the day we travelled. There is a small roadside cafe on the Hogsback. We stopped there for the view.





We arrived in Chawton and parked in the village car park next to the pub car park. They are two distinct car parks, separated by a scraggly thin looking hedge. Both are free to park in but to use the pub car park you really should go into the pub and have a beer or a bite to eat.Any excuse!!

Fields with wide extensive vistas populated by single trees, clumps of trees and dotted with sheep, surround Chawton. The countryside is as it would have been in the 18th century.

The main crossroads in Chawton has a traditional sign post that shows the directions to the parish church of St Nicholas, to Alton, the local town that Jane knew well, and the direction to Jane's cottage. The flag pole occasionally flies the union jack, especially on St Georges day.

I wanted to show Clive Jane Austen's cottage before our pub lunch.

The cottage stands, red bricks and tile roofed, massively, on the corner of the crossroads in Chawton.


Jane Austen, her mother, her sister Cassandra and her best friend, Martha Lloyd, moved into this cottage on her brother Edward Knight's estate in 1809. She was to live here for the rest of her short life. She died in 1817 at the age of 42, still in the process of writing two more novels, Sanditon and The Watsons and still fighting to get her work published and trying to get a good price for them.
I always think that the best thing to do is to explore the cottage quietly on your own. The very kind, friendly and knowledgeable people running the cottage, which is owned by the Jane Austen Society, will answer any questions you might have. They allow you to take photographs as long as you don't use a flash. That's OK with me. Flash,unless used appropriately and expertly bleaches a picture . I'd much rather adjust the ISO number and exposure time and focal length. The mood , richness and quality of pictures are much better without flash.Using natural light and the light available sets the scene much better too.
This is our tour of Jane's cottage and Chawton.
The dining room is at the front of the cottage. Jane sat at the window here looking out onto the road. It was the main road from London to Gosport, Winchester and Alton.She wrote at a small table positioned in the window. A large table is set with Regency tableware, for dinner. To the left of the fireplace is a cupboard in which Jane kept the families precious supply of tea.

In one bedroon is a naval officers bed. It is easily dismantled and put together again.It belonged to one of Jane's brothers, Francis, who was an officer and became an admiral in the Royal Navy. On the wall behind the bed are pictures of some of the ships he served in.
Jane and her sister Cassandra had a small bedroom at the back of the house overlooking a courtyard. There was a single bed for each of them in here.
Jane and Cassandra would often sit together, either side of the fireplace, in the evening, talking and taking turns to read Jane's writing, discussing characters and ideas as her novels progressed.There is a reconstruction of the sort of bed, with it's drapes, that Jane and Cassandra would have slept in. It is made by the same firm that Jane and Cassandra's original beds came from.

In a small side room upstairs there is another bed which has a copy of Jane's quilt spread across it. In her letters there are references to a quilt she is making. Jane often asks Cassandra to look out for peices of material that she can include in the making of this. Writing to Cassandra on Friday 31st may 1811 ," Have you remembered to collect peices for the Patchwork? - We are now at a standstill."
Earlier in the same letter we are treated to an example of Jane's wit and maybe, in this case, a sort of false tact. She tells Cassandra about the state of some mulberry bushes that Cassandra had obviously planted in the garden at Chawton. " I will not say that your Mulberry trees are dead, but they are not alive." A Jane Austen joke, well maybe.

Downstairs there is a pianoforte. Jane liked the music of the day and often played a pianoforte. Some sheet music, that Jane would have enjoyed, is placed on the music stand.

An original bookcase from the time of Jane, has a large selection of her first editions.


Tradition says that Jane relied on a creaking door, that lead into the dining room where she wrote, to warn her of people appraoching. If anybody entered from the rear of the house the door would creak and it gave Jane time to hide her writing. She was very protective of her work. She didn't want everybody to know that she wrote novels at first.This is a symptom of the attitudes of the time towards women.

At the back of the cottage there is a large yard surrounded by out buildings. There is a well in the yard that Edward, her brother, had dug especially for his mother and sisters moving into the cottage. Jane's bedroom is on the left above the glass roofed extension.

This is a sight Jane would often see. It is the view as you come out of her bedroom to walk downstairs.

Mrs Austen,her name was Cassandra too, had a much more spacious bedroom than her daughters room.
Jane's writing table is a flimsy delicate looking peice of furniture. She must have used other tables and other surfaces but by tradition she wrote on this table. You can imagine her editing Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and writing Mansfield Park on its grained and scratched surface.

After Clive and I had spent some time in the cottage it was time for a pub lunch. Across the road from the cottage is the Greyfriar, a Fullers pub. Fullers are a brewery in North London. They brew some great real ale.The pub has a wonderful menu. The food is excellent, especially when accompanied by a pint of London Pride ale. The back garden is relaxing to sit out in on a sunny summers day. You can look into the neighbours back gardens.The gardens are English country gardens brimming with holleyhocks, roses, bluebells in spring and a whole variety of English country garden plants.Take your note books and cameras when you visit.

After a tour of Jane's cottage I was desperate to get across the road for a beer.

The back of the Greyfriars is a jumble of extended buildings, oak tables,terracotta pots with climbing shrubs and plants and our two pints of beer begun, but not yet finished. After a filling repast of steak and kidney pie cooked in ale and one pint of quenching beer, I was driving, so one pint was my limit, we decided it was time to take the Gosport Road. Gosport is about twenty miles from Chawton and we had no intention of walking all the way there. The road itself is the road that passes the windows of Jane's cottage and leads towards St Nicholas's Church and The Great House. It leads nowhere else nowadays. There is a new Gosport road that bypasses the village.

On our left, on the other side of a moss capped flint wall,was Chawton Cricket clubs pitch.The club dates from 1883 and it's President is Robert Knight, who decends from the same Knight family Edward, Jane's brother, was adopted into. The most famous of the early cricket clubs in England was at Hambledon only about thirty miles from Chawton. Hambledon Cricket Club was founded in the early 1760's. Cricket became a very popular country sport. It brought villages together regularly to play against each other and set up friendly rivalries.Although Chawton didn't get it's own official club until long after Jane died it would have been played in the area amongst the farmers and farm labourers on an adhoc basis. Jane may well have seen a game played amongst the villagers herself.

Oh yes getting back to that moss capped, flint wall. You come across many walls made from napped flint. Some cottages are built from it.Flint is a hard crystalline formation found in sedimentary rocks mostly chalk and limestone. The South Downs of England are made from chalk deposits so there are a lot of areas flint can be procured from near Chawton.It has been a very useful material over the millenia. Stone age man was able to make sharp tools such as scrapers, knives and axes from it. It has and is used as a building material and also it is great for creating a spark, when struck, to light a fire. In the 17th and 18th century small pieces of flint were inserted into the firing mechanisms of flintlock rifles. A spark from the sharply struck flint ignited the gunpowder in the pan and created a small explosion that fired the musket ball.


I thought this wall looked so wonderful I just had to take a picture of it.




Then of course Clive had to take a picture of me taking a picture of the flint wall. It all got a little crazy, especially when a lady wearing a bonnet, pelise and attired in a long dress, walked up to us, introduced herself as Jane and offered to a take picture of us.
Clive and I stood, arms around each others shoulders in the long driveway that leads up to The Great House.Picture taken by......!!!!!!!!!! Well, who else do you think could have taken it?

Just checking to see how much battery life I had left in my camera and the amount of space I had left on my memory card.

A mile stone on the old Gosport Road.




On our walk from Jane's cottage to St Nicholas's Church and The Great House, Clive and I passed many beautiful old cottages. Most of them would have been here in Jane's time.

Thatch is a common roofing material in Chawton.
You can find traditonal thatched roofed cottages in many Hampshire villages. Throughout England you can see many varieties of thatching.

Thatching has been used for centuries. Iron Age huts , Roman buildings, Saxon, Norman, Tudor Elizabethan,Stuart, Georgian buildings , up to this day.Water reeds are the most durable and can last up to fifty years before needing to be replaced.Straw and wheat can be used too.The gentle contours and swelling shapes made by a thatched roof give the cottages a homely comfortable feel.

On the way along the Gosport Road towards St Nicholas's Church there are many gardens that can be described as traditional English country gardens.Wisteria climbs around some of the doorways and works its way along the eaves. The gardens are a mass of informally scattered flowers. A whole artists pallet of colours created by tall holleyhocks,climbing roses, delphiniums, allysum and interspersed with fragrant herbs and wild daisies.The untidyness is important.An English country garden is wild and unkempt but becomes a glorious mass of colour reaching all heights and levels.

Most of the cottages in Chawton are made of brick.
Bricks have been made in the vicinity of Chawton for centuries. The brickyard at Selborne, five miles from Chawton, has been there at least since 1872. It still makes handmade bricks. All the bricks that were used to build Jane's cottage and the other 17th and 18th century and some older, cottages were handmade from local clays.

Bricks have been layed in different patterns throughout the centuries . Bricks are layed to create a strong wall that can stand the test of time. In the late 17th century and early 18th century English bond was popular. This consisted of alternate courses of headers and stretchers. The header is the smaller end of the brick. The stretcher is the long side. Clive and I really needed a ruler with us to test the measurements of the bricks. You might find it interesting to know that a 17th century brick generally measured 2 inches high, 4 5/8 inches wide and 9 3/4 inches long, while an 18th century brick measured 2 5/8 inches high, 4 1/4 inches wide and 8 3/4 inches long. Of course, we could tell which was which by just looking from a distance.

Back in the Greyfriars Clive recorded the name of the beer he had drunk. Well, that's going to be a literary gem for the generations to come.

Just outside of the gateway to The Great House is an 18th century shepherds hut. A shepherd would live in a hut like this in the fields where his flock were grazing, especially during the lambing season, so he could keep an eye on their wellfare. I couldn't resist having a look inside. It made me think of the scene in Thomas Hardy's ,Far From The Madding Crowd, where Gabriel Oak is tending his flock on the Dorset cliffs.Gabriel Oak was living in a hut very similar to the one near The Great House. It also has associations with Bathsheba Everdeen played by Julie Christie in the film. OH!! memories of Julie Christie............. Sorry,........ mustn't go there.



The present day St Nicholas Church is not the church Jane would have known. It as been rebuilt since her day.


If Clive can catch me out looking into the shepherds hut here's a picture of Clive getting a good angle on St Nicholas's.

In the fields around The Great House you can often see shire horses grazing, like these. In Janes time they would have been used to pull ploughs and heavy carts. In George Orwells Animal farm, Boxer, the workhorse was one of these shire horses. Boxer's maxim was, " I will work harder."

The graves of Jane's mother and sister are in the churchyard of St Nicholas.
As you face the two graves her mother, Cassandra, is on the left and her sister, Cassandra Elizabeth is on the right.
Mrs Austen died on the 18th January 1827 at the age of 87. Her sister, Cassandra, died on the 27th march 1845 at the age of 72.
The Great House is just as Jane knew it. It belonged to her brother Edward who was adopted into the wealthy Knight family. It is now a library for women authors who wrote from 1600 to 1830. It is open to the public but you have to phone first to make an appointment. It has strong links with the University of Southampton, providing resources for it's masters degree in 18th century studies. The grounds of the house are being restored to the landscape style of the 18th century. At the end of our Chawton sojourn, Clive and I returned to my car in the car park, near Jane's cottage and then we drove home.