Alton and Chawton

Alton is a lovely town complete with an excellent Thai Restaurant (The River Kwai). Its origins date back to the Roman Road and certainly was at least a spot on the road during the Danish invasion (circa 1000). It was the signing location for the treaty between Henry I and Robert, Duke of Normandy (hence the name Alton Treaty in 1101).  It is also home to the Watercress Line – an old Hants railway that used to transport all the watercress grown here to market. One can still ride the old Diesel and Steam locomotives on weekends throughout the year.

After wandering through town, visiting the Curtis Musem (free) and taking a lot of pictures. we traveled a bit further down A31 to Chawton  and Jane Austin’s house. To be honest, I am not a fan of Jane Austin. She might have written characters true to her era, but I don’t like preachy and the “taking care of the poor master/children/whatever” trope leaves me cold. Nevertheless, I liked the house and the houses in the area.

What follows is a gallery of the photos from today, first from Alton and the museum followed by inside Jane Austins house and Chawton.

Knitting

The alpaca striped scarf was finished up at lunch. This evening I finished the right front on Wicked Eyelet and started sewing the sides together. That will leave me to find buttons and add an edge finishing. You will get pix of both in the morning as I don’t feel like opening up the FTP and hand typing in the URLs (maybe at the end of the gallery? We will see how much energy I have). I also need to get these all uploaded to Flickr to give some variety to my sidebar

Reading and Watching

A Deeper Blue – by John Ringo in paperback. CSI:Miami Season Three on the laptop.

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4 Responses to Alton and Chawton

  1. Ruth says:

    Alton and Chawton look like places I would have been happy to visit! Give me a little warning next time you do a history/literature jaunt, will ya? It’s takes me a bit of time to get there…. 🙂

  2. Melinda says:

    Awwww, you just reminded me of a fabulous trip I took in Dec. I visited a friend who was a fellow at Chawton House at the time. It was a brilliant trip. I love JA and there were some good JA and non-JA related events at the time, but I have to admit that JAs house itself wasn’t particularly interesting. Chawton House has a whole lot more worth seeing, even if Jane never actually lived there. It’s nice to see pictures of the place in Spring though. It was pretty cold and winter drab when I was there. Thanks for sharing!

  3. Angeluna says:

    Enjoyed seeing these villages through your photos. Absolutely love the thatch roof houses.

  4. Lisa says:

    Great pictures!

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