] Of course Abbeys should have the ghosts of mistreated nuns, cloisters, damp, dark corridors and other gothic accoutrements. JA was a great supporter of the historical as manifest in her later remarks about "improvements" in Mansfield Park where Southerton is supposedly based on Stoneleigh Abbey, owned by JA's uncle Thomas Leigh.

] Don't miss Stoneleigh if you ever do a JA tour of the UK. It's fab!

Thanks for the Stoneleigh Abbey Link. It looks wonderful!

There is another Abbey Jane was famillar with, as I learned during our recent Jane Austen's life MT. Jane and her sister Cassandra spent several years at Abbey School, in Reading, during the 1780s. The school was housed in a former abbey, complete pointy Gothic windows and towers. If only Catherine Morland had been so lucky!