FEATURE
JANE AUSTEN’S KENT
Can you guess which of Britain’s best-loved authors described Kent as “
...the only place for happiness”? Charles Dickens? Ian Fleming? HG Wells? It’s high praise for the county – and surprising to learn that it came from the Regency novelist Jane Austen, usually more associated with Hampshire or Bath
Words Vicky Hales-Dutton Photographs Terry Townsend
The Red House Sevenoaks where Jane and her family stayed with her Great Uncle Francis Austen for a month in 1788 when she was 12-and-a-half
This medieval house in Tonbridge High Street was home to Thomas Austen, an apothecary, and his wife Elizabeth
J
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ane Austen wrote those words to her sister Cassandra in 1798 and there’s no doubt that her Kent roots were hugely signifi cant to her life and career. At least seven generations of Austens – Yeoman farmers and wool manufacturers – lived here from the 1600s. Crucially, too, a taste of life in country houses owned by her brother Edward proved hugely enjoyable, providing inspiration for the likes of Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Mansfi eld Park.
If you’re interested in local history and can’t get enough of Austen (the band of Janeites grows daily) the new must-read is Jane Austen’s Kent, a glossy, 144-page compendium by retired graphic designer Terry
Townsend which painstakingly traces the novelist’s ancestry
through 250 years and tracks the
family’s movements around the county. Although Jane herself was born in Steventon, Hampshire – on 16th December 1775 – to the Reverend George and Cassandra Austen and lived for most of her life in the area, Kent is strewn with Austen memorabilia. As Terry reveals, the family’s infl uence reaches far and wide, to Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells, Horsmonden (where John, the earliest traceable Austen, lived during the reign of James I) and east towards Canterbury.
Tonbridge & Sevenoaks
There are no fewer than 22 Austen family connections with Tonbridge (or Tunbridge as it was known in Jane’s day). It all began in 1693 with the marriage of Jane’s great- grandparents, John Austen (great-grandson of Horsmonden John) and Tonbridge-born
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In August 1805 Jane stayed here in the Dower House at Goodnestone
Elizabeth Weller. When John died leaving Elizabeth to raise seven children, she cannily landed the position of housekeeper to the headmaster of Sevenoaks School, receiving free education for her sons and a plaque there to her memory. Two of Elizabeth’s offspring, Thomas, an
apothecary, and William, a surgeon, lived in Tonbridge High Street. There’s a memorial to William in the Church of St Peter and St Paul where his son George (Jane’s father) was baptised in 1731.
Local life
Orphaned six years later, George went to live elsewhere in Tonbridge with great-aunt
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Terry Townsend
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