L&T Archive 1998-2003

M.T. Jane Austen's Southampton

Southampton is one JA location which has changed out of all recognition. The Castle which provided JA's garden walls (laburnams, currants and gooseberry bushes) is gone, and the town was almost flattened during WWII. Fortunately, several old maps exist showing it as she would have known it- a spa town by the sea. The link below is to Milne's map of 1791 again...you can find the castle (not a real castle but a folly) the mineral spa at Above Bar St , the theatre, hospitals, a French Church, the Bridewell, and the Quay, where Jane took her nephews and they jumped on and off a collier, and shot at paper ships.