Visiting the homes of Jane Austen - and now you can stay at one!!!

The Jane Austen House in Chawton, one of the homes the author lived in, but you can't spend the night here.

As a Janeite, every trip I've taken across the pond has included some Jane Austen excursion.  In 2006, we visited Bath, including the Pump Room where our favorite author would have socialized. Five years later, while Rachel was on her study-abroad in London, mom and daughter took a few days before the semester started to visit Chawton, the cottage Jane shared with her sister and mother after her father died.  On the same trip, we stopped in Winchester to see the last home of Jane Austen as well the famous cathedral where she was buried.  In 2015, we were at the British Library and, in  room where no pictures can be taken, viewed original manuscripts and letters in Jane's own hand as well as her writing desk. And, just two years ago, we toured Lyme Park and Chatsworth, English country manor homes that stood in as "Pemberley" in two "Pride and Prejudice" movies.  

Lyme Park, BBC's Pemberley

British Library  houses Jane's writing (room behind BTS blogger)

Now Airbnb allows us to "kick it up a notch" by actually staying overnight in a place Jane once resided! It's enough to make me start my own personal go-fun-me piggy bank!

To partake in this excursion, (which would be met by much approbation by this blog's author!), it would take us back to Bath, in particular to Sydney Place.

BTS visits Bath in 2006. Although not a favorite spot of Jane Austen's, it's at the heart of two of her novels.

Featured in Apartment Therapy, the accommodations available to interested tourists - or fanatic Janeites - is a portion of the home that the Austen family leased from 1801 to 1805.  The space that once housed the Austen family's kitchen, scullery and vaults has been converted into a two bedroom, one bath guest suite. As the owner of the home notes, here one can enjoy "the very place where Jane would have made tea and breakfast for her family, while looking out the window onto the courtyard".

Putting the kettle on for tea at Jane Austen's home in Chawton. Only spending the night could make this better!

The home is not exactly kept in Regency-period style, but a full immersion is not necessarily essential to channel your inner-Jane. The updated bathroom, for example, features such luxuries as  heated floors and a rainfall shower,  We're okay with paying additional cents for modern-day sensibilities.

But really, costs are not prohibitive. Current nightly rates are posted at $177.00 a night - which seems a reasonable price for these special guest rooms and their provenance. 

Winchester Cathedral where Jane Austen is buried.

Last home of the celebrated author

Although, by most accounts, Jane Austen was not terribly fond of Bath, it's at the heart of two of her novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Her dislike for the quaint town may be more due to circumstances - her father was ill, she and her sister, Cassandra, in their late twenties, were "aging out" of the prime dancing seats at the Pump Room - than its geography.

Rachel playing the piano-forte at Jane Austen's home in Chawton in 2011.

A place of some significance, Bath surely would be a lovely place to stay for a fortnight (give or take a week), and provide much felicity for an Austen devotee and admirer of all things in the Regency period except, perhaps, outdoor plumbing - and we're okay with that!