Literary Passion · Chawton, Hampshire
Jane Austen's House, Chawton
The cottage where Austen revised and wrote the six novels that taught the English how to fall in love — every drawing-room glance, every letter pressed into a gloved hand, composed at a twelve-sided walnut table small enough to hide when visitors called.
Sources
Nearby on the map
Keith Richards's moated cottage, raided by eighteen officers on a February evening in 1967 with Marianne Faithfull famously wrapped in a fur rug. The trial threatened prison and produced the era-defining Times editorial 'Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?'
Documented + folkloreBohemian & LibertineMedmenham Abbey (the Monks of Medmenham)Medmenham, Buckinghamshire · EnglandThe riverside sham-gothic abbey where Dashwood's order first met, its door inscribed with Rabelais's 'Fais ce que tu voudras'. Contemporaries whispered of mock rites and masked ladies arriving by barge; the truth was scandalous enough that every account since has struggled to separate orgy from embellishment — this entry says so plainly.
Documented historyRoyal LiaisonFort Belvedere (Edward VIII & Wallis Simpson)Sunningdale, Surrey · EnglandThe country retreat where the King's affair with the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson deepened, and where he signed the Instrument of Abdication in December 1936 — love versus the crown.
Documented historySpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.