Anspach Place, Southampton
Why is there a square named Anspach Place in Southampton? It is named after Anspach House, a now-vanished building once occupied by Elizabeth Craven and her second husband, the Margrave of Anspach.
She and the Margrave leased a house there on the West Quay from 1801 until 1812 to use as a holiday home. She loved sailing and kept a boat there, in which she sailed across the Channel on at least one occasion. Southampton attracted many sailing enthusiasts who loved to take their private boats out towards and around the Isle of Wight. Later she also leased the adjacent house, and named the combined residence Anspach House. It was next door to the mediaeval Westgate, with its stone Gothic arch.
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| Anspach House 1845 |
In the summer of 1809, Craven spent some weeks there in the company of the young novelist Anna Maria Porter, one of the many female writers she took under her wing.
If they attended any of the public social events in the town, they might have met another aspiring writer who had not yet at that time been published - Jane Austen, who lived at Southampton from 1806 until 1809, with her mother and her sister Cassandra.
Craven and Austen had at least one acquaintance in common, the Marquis of Lansdowne, who was the Austens' landlord. He lived in a mock-Gothic castle in Castle Square, the site of the original mediaeval stronghold, and rented out various small houses and cottages surrounding it. Among them was 2, Castle Square, the address from which many of Austen's letters are dated in 1807-1809. It was only a ten minute walk across the small mediaeval port to the Westgate.
Like the Margravine, Lord Lansdowne was a sailing enthusiast and kept his yacht, and crew, at Southampton. His father had been well known to her. In November 1806 the Margravine witnessed a boating accident in which Lansdowne nearly drowned. His yacht, the Frisk, went out in a squall, and was overturned in the bay.
She describes it thus in her Memoirs:-
DURING my residence at Southampton, in 1806, where I had a house pleasantly situated near the river, the Marquis of Lansdowne, who was extremely fond of aquatic excursions, and delighted in nautical experiments, had prepared a vessel, which he had built at Southampton under the superintendence of a skilful engineer. It was in the month of November, and Captain Haywood, of the Navy, requested permission to attend his Lordship, who wished to try how the vessel would sail without ballast; it being double-bottomed. The Captain having approved the experiment, they agreed to leave the Quay at twelve o'clock; the tide then running up, and it being nearly high water, with a gale blowing hard.
In a few minutes they had proceeded from the Quay about a mile, and the vessel being schooner-rigged, by the time the head-sails were set, in running up the main-sail, she overset. Lord Lansdowne was the only person thrown out, as he was standing inattentively upon the deck; the rest of the party, seven in number, clung to the side of the vessel: fortunately his Lordship caught hold of the masthead, and thus preserved himself from destruction.
I was at the back windows of my house, overlooking the river and viewing his Lordship's exploits, at the moment this occurrence took place. I was so alarmed for his Lordship's safety, and terrified at his danger, that I ordered all my servants to run up to the Marchioness, who was residing at her castle, to inform her of the catastrophe, and urge her to hasten down to the shore and render him assistance."
She also ordered her own boat crew out immediately to rescue as many of Lansdowne's people as possible. Meanwhile she and her maid went down to the shore to revive the dripping survivors with brandy.
The Austens had moved to Southampton in October 1806, only a few weeks before this accident, and they could hardly have avoided hearing about it in such a small town. However, there is no mention of it in Jane's letters.
Anspach House is very close to Castle Square, only about a ten-minute walk across the tiny mediaeval part of the town. The Westgate archway is the main entrance to the Quay, so Jane and her family, who enjoyed sea front walks, would have walked very close to the Margravine's door on many occasions. And it is likely that they both attended the same church, All Saints, a Wren-style Palladian building, within easy walking distance of both houses.
Jane Austen was not on familiar terms with Lord Lansdowne. She had evidently seen him and his wife, because she wrote this on 8th February 1807, regarding the preparation of the house they were to rent:-
Our dressing table is constructing on the spot, out of a large kitchen table belonging to the house, for doing which we have the permission of Mr. Husket, Lord Lansdown's painter - domestic painter I should call him, for he lives in the Castle. Domestic chaplains have given way to this more necessary office, & I suppose whenever the Walls want no touching up, he is employed about my Lady's face.
It is a very barbed, in fact downright bitchy, comment, full of disapproval. She implies moral decline since great lords now employ only domestic painters instead of chaplains, and when not painting walls they can help to paint Lady Lansdowne's face. There are many scathing comments in Austen about women wearing rouge, a familiar custom in high society though not in a country parsonage.
The reference to Lords having domestic chaplains is very interesting. It suggests to me that Austen's mind was running on her sister Cassandra's fiancé, Rev. Tom Fowle, who had died while abroad serving William, Lord Craven - the Margravine's son - as a chaplain. Very few Georgian peers still kept domestic chaplains, and William only employed one for his regiment when on campaign. Is it possible that Austen had been put in mind of Cassandra's disappointment by something - possibly the sight of the Margravine in the town, in the company of Lord Lansdowne?
Given that the Margravine and their landlord were on such cordial terms, if Jane Austen saw one of them it was quite likely to be in the company of the other.
After 1809, Austen moved to Chawton Cottage, and in 1812 Craven sold the remaining lease on the house as she could no longer afford to keep it up. Anspach House was destroyed by fire in 1870, but the part of the Quay where the house once stood is still named Anspach Place.
'Lady Betty Craven', by J. E. Dengate in Southampton Local History Forum Journal, no 4, p 7-8 (HS/h) Spring 1993.
‘Her Serene Highness of West Quay’, by John Edgar Mann in Hampshire, vol. 33. no. 8, p47-48. (H/y)Southampton Occasional Notes(2nd Series), by ‘Townsman’, p72 (HS/h)
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