David Barnes takes a trip to Hampshire to visit two neighbouring, but contrasting literary houses – where their famous occupants’ residencies were short-lived for very different reasons.
I make no claim for expertise in the topics in this article but having enjoyed a life of education and learning (but not, dear reader, leisure) I come to studies around Gaskell with an interest in how her work reflects what EM Forster called “only connect”. So, on a brief break in the South of England I took the opportunity to visit Chawton, the home of Jane Austen, and Holybourne, which almost became Elizabeth Gaskell’s final home, both in Hampshire near the town of Alton. We make and limit our own connections depending on our experiences and personal history but for what it is worth here are mine, based on that tour.
The house in Holybourne, still known as The Lawn, is now a residential care home owned by Friends of the Elderly and they kindly allowed us to see the Drawing Room where Elizabeth may have spent her last moments. The three large sash windows of the lovely, light and airy drawing room with a garden view perhaps suggests something similar to the ambience of the house on Plymouth Grove in Elizabeth’s lifetime and even familiar to visitors now.
The blue plaque indicates that Elizabeth owned the house, but it is possible that ownership was only completed by William Gaskell the week after Elizabeth’s death. Nevertheless, it is probable that Elizabeth intended this as the new family residence and she did have a short stay at the house, for exactly how long is not clear.
Chawton House is a so-called Great House based on an Elizabethan manor; it is a mansion for the landed gentry. The Lawn at Holybourne was a more modest Victorian country villa. George White, who sold the house, was listed as having an occupation of fundholder in the 1861 census, usually indicating someone with income from government securities. But the physical difference in the residences is not an easy indicator of the cultural background of the authors, nor of their modern reception. First, in a sense, neither of these houses were the residences of the authors. Chawton House was owned by Jane’s brother Edward and she visited regularly from her more modest abode in the village. And, although Elizabeth was at the very least negotiating the purchase of The Lawn at Holybourne, her length of residence was probably relatively short.
Jane Austen is sometimes regarded as having a larger cosmopolitan hinterland than Elizabeth Gaskell, but in fact much of this was based on Austen’s family connections. Austen was born and died in Hampshire, whereas Gaskell was born in Chelsea, lived in Cheshire and Manchester, died in Hampshire and travelled widely. It can be argued that for a Londoner like Gaskell, the experience of Manchester in the mid-19th century would be a very ‘foreign’ thing and as someone who moved from so-called ‘leafy’ Surrey to ‘gritty’ Manchester in 1989 I can empathise with such a perspective. Confession – soon after moving to Manchester in 1989 I joined the Gaskell Society as the best way to familiarise myself with the history of the city-region; but having read Sylvia’s Lovers in readiness for the conference in 1990 or 1991 I have read little of Gaskell’s works since – and I have still only read Pride and Prejudice of Austen’s oeuvre. It is the scholarship around the two authors that fascinates me. Austen is the subject of considerable research and the Gaskell Society and Journal continue to give impressive insights to the life and times.
Elizabeth died at Holybourne, northeast of Alton, only five miles from Chawton House, southwest of Alton. Jane’s resting place is the glorious Winchester Cathedral; Elizabeth’s is Brook Street Chapel in Knutsford, and in that commemoration both are committed to the home terrain of their fictive geography, but with quite variable international renown.
In the Gaskell Journal in 2016 Amy Montz explored literary tourism as a personal pilgrimage of Gaskellian and Janeite locations and concluded that by visiting those locations it was possible to be a more authentic ‘critic-fan’. I’m not sure I’d go that far after my mini-pilgrimage, but it certainly enriches the experience of place. I was fortunate enough to have shared the experience of Chawton in 2025 with the chair of the Gaskell Society and I think the photo here in the neighbouring churchyard clearly demonstrates her admiration for Miss Austen. Chawton House emphasises that Austen “was no country bumpkin”. Moreover, her brother Henry had a flat above his bank in Henrietta Street in London, allowing Jane to stay when visiting her publishers. But Austen was rooted in the South of England and Pride and Prejudice is redolent of that experience. So perhaps it is as well that Mrs Gaskell’s North and South is a sort of northern rendition of the same story and provides a compelling argument that the mill owners could be regarded as a form of nouvelle aristocracy. Indeed, the doctrine of ‘only connect’ may see Gaskell and Austen as sharing a keen interest in the exploration of domestic manners. Both Jane and Elizabeth died too young but they have left us not only with wonderful writing, but also a legacy of historic places we are fortunate to be able to enjoy.
Words and pictures: David Barnes
