Jane Austen's brother Edward owned the large estate of Chawton in Hampshire including this Tudor manor house which Jane called the Great House. He was fortunate enough to have been adopted by its previous owners, the Knight family. Something rather similar happens to Frank Churchill in Emma.
The Knights were distant relatives of the Austens, and had no child or heir of their own. They could have adopted any one of the Austen children, but they were only interested in a boy. It was an early lesson for Jane about how girls were less valued. When he grew up, Edward rarely lived at Chawton House as he acquired an even grander mansion, Godmersham Park in Kent, which became his by marriage. When he was at Chawton, and his mother and sisters were installed in the cottage, they were frequently invited to visit him at the Great House. It was only a short walk from their home along a country lane and then up the drive. Tall trees create a splendid avenue (just like the one at Sotherton Court in Mansfield Park.) The house has three stories, with mullioned windows, gables and tall brick chimneys. The red tiled roof gives it a warm and mellow appearance in the sunshine.
Visitors arrive first in the Great Hall, which is oak panelled and makes an impressive reception room.
Family portraits hang on the walls, displaying the wealth and status of generations of the Knight family.This ancestor, Elizabeth Knight, owned the estate in her own right and made her husbanf change his name to Knight when he married her.
There is a splendid dining-room which will comfortably seat twelve people.
Here hangs a miniature portrait of Edward Austen's daughter, Fanny Knight, who was Jane Austen's favourite niece. She has the dark hair, aquiline nose and small mouth that are found in several other Austen family portraits, and looks rather like her aunt Jane, going on the sketch by Cassandra which is all we have. Jane called her "almost another sister" and after Fanny's mother died in 1808, her two aunts played a very important part of her life.
Fanny married well, and became Lady Knatchbull. In her old age she wrote some rather condescending things about her aunts, saying that the Austen family had been rather common and lacking in refinement, quite ignorant of the manners of fashionable society.
Upstairs at Chawton is a cosy little alcove where Austen, according to family tradition, liked to sit and read, when she was allowed to stay at the house. I wonder if Edward made her sleep in an "East Room".
From the South and West, the house looks mellow as the walls are made of red brick, and it seems to nestle in its gardens which give views of the surrounding estate and countryside. It is wonderful that this house is now a study centre for women's history, and has a library dedicated to women writers of the Georgian period, the forerunners and contemporaries of Jane Austen. The more we know about them, the better we will understand and appreciate her.
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