House, Gardens & Cafe Open Tuesday - Sunday 10.30 - 17.00

Jane Austen Regency Week House Tour

As part of Alton’s Jane Austen Regency Week, we will be giving a Jane Austen tour of Gilbert White’s House!

Learn more about the biggest local literary figure before Austen moved to the area. Learn about the similarities in their lives and the people and places that they both knew. You will be lead around the 18th Century house by the museum’s collections manager Kimberley James in Regency costume.

Tours begin from the Stable Yard at 2pm and 3pm and each tour is approximately an hour.

£10 (includes access to the house and garden before and after the tour)

 

    Gilbert Whites House

    Gilbert White was aged 7 or 8 when the White family moved from the Vicarage on Selborne’s Plestor, to this house, called ‘The Wakes’ (named after the Wake family who had lived here previously). At that time the property would have been no more than a ‘two up, two down’  but over the subsequent years lots of extensions and additions have been made, creating the long sizeable house you see today.

    The rooms have been restored following descriptions in White’s own correspondence and include a chair he used at Oriel College, Oxford (loaned from the College), items of contemporary furniture, family portraits and bed hangings embroidered for him by his aunts.

    On display is the original manuscript of his book, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, which was purchased with generous help from English Heritage and others.

    Learn more