Here's what Irene Collins says;

Meanwhile the Rev George Lefroy had built himself a rather more elegant parsonage [than Steventon] when he arrived to take up his duties at Ashe in the 1780's. With a beautifully proportioned front elevation and a handsome segmented fanlight over the door, the rooms were large enough for balls to be given there in the 1790's.....

I agree with you, Patricia, it sure looks a bit earlier. All I can say is that Ms. Collins is usually right, and if she says that Mr. Lefroy came in the eighties and built then, she probably has evidence for it. A puzzle, no? On the other hand, fashions in houses usually started with the London crowd and only gradually moved out into the country. Even though this is only fifty miles from London, it is still a relatively modest house (by eighteenth century standards, I mean!) Houses such as these wouldn't be designed by an architect, but would be created by a local builder, with the ideas of the owner to go by. Builders are naturally very conservative, preferrring to go by what they know will work, rather than creating a work of art that might be structurally dubious. If Mr Lefroy was also fairly conservative, then the end result would probably be an old-fashioned house.

As to the windows.. you are right about the laws, but I have a feeling that these windows have been replaced several times since 1780,;-).Since today, the window jambs do not have to be so hidden, I suspect that these modern "georgian" windows were not patterned exactly on the originals.

One more bit of info on dating buildings like this...(and this is why I was faffing about trying to show you the brickwork )..the house is built using a brick pattern called "flemish bond". In this pattern , the bricks are laid alternating a header and a stretcher (the stretcher is a side view, and the header is the end view). So, if you look at any one row of bricks, or any one vertical column of bricks, you see an alternating pattern of side-end-side-end/ header-stretcher-header-stretcher. This pattern was the one most commonly used right from the time when Henry VIII built the Nonesuch Palace until about 1750. The bricks are also typical of the date in that they are slightly smaller than modern bricks (and definitely much smaller than 17 cent. ones, which were taxed,)and also that they are that rosy-pink colour- genuine Hampshire brick.

That garden wall, on the other hand, with bigger bricks, efflorescing white salts, are laid in the pattern known as "english bond": that is a row of headers on top of a row of stretchers. This bond was the most common one after about 1830, and continued to be used almost exclusively up until World War I. So Jane Austen wouldn't have known that particular garden wall. I suspect that there wasn't a wall at all there, probably only a hedge.

This house ceased to be a rectory in 1905, apparently. And, I presume, is now a private house. As such, there wouldn't be a strict controls over its details as if it was a museum piece; however, I have no doubt that it is a listed building, meaning that any proposed changes to it (even things like replacing windows, or rebuilding garden walls) would have to be approved by the planning department of Hampshire County Council. I'll have a look in the public records........;-)

Do you happen to know the date the photo of the inside was taken, Patricia?