A wrecking ball for Ashe Park House

The material traces of Jane Austen’s life are so scarce that devoted Janeites—or people seeking to profit off Janeite devotion--tend to attach great importance to every spot she may have visited, slept in, danced at, or otherwise graced with her presence for any length of time, however brief. As a result, suggested changes to even the most peripheral of Austen sites tend to encounter howls of protest.

Last year saw the kerfuffle over redevelopment of the Dolphin Hotel in Southampton, England, where Austen attended three balls. And now comes news that, despite some local opposition, planning authorities for the Hampshire communities of Basingstoke and Deane, not far from Austen's home village of Steventon, have granted permission to demolish a stately home that she mentions in her letters.

Last summer, as blog readers will recall, the overseas owners of Ashe Park House, its outbuildings, and the surrounding 235 acres of land announced that the once-stately home was, basically, a mess. After buying the estate in 2022 for £17 million (about $22 million), they had decided the best course was to tear down the 13,000-square-foot main house and build a spanking new Queen Anne-style replacement, complete with swimming-pool wing.

Predictable local outrage ensued, and some of the outraged locals claimed that their anger stemmed from regret over the loss of an Austen-linked site—most memorable, to Janeites, as the place where Austen once kept her hand firmly on the doorknob of a room in which she found herself uncomfortably alone with the possibly handsy Mr. Holder.

I can’t help wondering, though, if the opponents of the Ashe Park teardown may have used Our Jane as an easy peg on which to hang a general dislike of change. My suspicions stem from the apparently undisputed fact that, while it’s located in the same spot, the present-day Ashe Park House doesn’t have much to do with the place Austen knew.

Centuries of wear and tear—renovations, repurposing, a couple of fires—have left Ashe Park House a shell of its former self, the local planning committee agreed in a final report released last month (viewable only from an EU IP address or via VPN). Quoting from a 2024 assessment by the government preservation body Historic England, the report notes, “Jane Austen refers to visiting the previous Ashe Park House in her letters, but there is no evidence that this earlier building is embedded in the current house of 1865 . . . nor that it had any direct influence on her literary output."

“Given the substantial changes in the 20th and 21st centuries, the building retains limited architectural and historic merit,” the report concludes, “and whilst the estate as a whole has historic interest, the main structure holds little significance.”

So Ashe Park House is going down—unsurprisingly, since the building never had “listed” status, the UK designation for buildings important enough to deserve special protections. And whatever we Janeites might choose to believe, the shadow of Jane Austen’s hand on a now-vanished doorknob isn’t quite enough to merit special standing.