The Double Red Duke, Oxfordshire

Yesterday I visited the Cotswolds for a press preview of The Double Red Duke, housed in a wisteria-covered former coaching inn dating from around the 17th century. The building has been extended by its new owners (Country Creatures, who have two other hotels in the area: The Swan Inn at Ascott-under-Wychwood and the The Chequers, Churchill) to include a light-filled garden room and restaurant. This new addition is in Clanfield, about 25 minutes’ drive from Oxford, at the southern end of the Cotswolds.

It’s a perfect getaway from London: cosy, romantic, beautifully designed, and with a menu overseen by former Hawksmoor group head chef Richard Sandiford — cooking over fire and sharing plates feature heavily. The older part of the building is a maze of snug little sitting rooms where you can hole up when the weather (inevitably, or so it seems right now) turns blustery. Even in May the log fires were welcome (as were the complimentary wellies).

Spring at Sissinghurst

Approaching Sissinghurst Castle, once the home of Vita Sackville-West and famed for its gardens, you see a long, low, homely looking building, almost like an overgrown farmhouse but for the tower behind it which gives it a grander air. As it turns out, the house sits on the site of a Saxon pig farm, and the oldest parts of the current buildings date from the 1530s. In the mid-18th century it was used as a prison for up to 3,000 French sailors captured during the Seven Years War. Surrounded by higgledy piggledy outbuildings which seem to have a jumble of roofs and gables, it is the centre of a world-famous garden conceived of and created by author and poet Vita Sackville-West during the 1930s and 40s. After her death and that of her husband Harold Nicolson, it passed to the National Trust.

At the moment bookings are restricted — the National Trust opens ticket sales every Friday for all their properties while lockdown restrictions are in place. Usually there are around 3,000 visitors a day to Sissinghurst but at the moment only 600 a day are allowed. It will be absolutely beautiful in early summer, and at only 1-1.5 hours’ drive from London, it’s an ideal day trip. The wider estate has some lovely woodland walks; we sat huddled in our winter coats (but enjoying gorgeous sunshine) while we had a picnic with friends, but as with many National Trust properties there are food and drink options on site (although takeaway only at the moment).

Jane Austen's house in Chawton

During the summer we paid a visit to Chawton Cottage, the house in Hampshire that Jane Austen moved to in 1809, and where she lived for the last eight years of her life. I’d always meant to write about it on here, because it was a wonderful experience for an Austen-lover like me, and the recent coronavirus lockdown has really brought home to me how very circumscribed the lives of women have been throughout most of history — confined mainly to their homes and villages and with only their immediate family and relatively small social circles around them. And it’s some comfort to think that confinement (and boredom!) can sometimes give rise to creativity, as it did for Jane Austen (even if in my own case the endless meal planning and preparation and childcare and homeschooling doesn’t seem to have resulted in a surge of creativity — yet!).

Before moving to Chawton, Jane Austen lived for 25 years at the rectory in Steventon where she was born, the youngest of six children. When her father retired in 1800, he moved his wife and their two daughters to rented accommodation in Bath, and her brother James inherited both the rectory and the living at Steventon.

Her father’s  sudden death in 1805 meant that Jane, her sister Cassandra and their mother were effectively homeless, and spent several years either staying in rented houses or with friends and relatives. Only in 1809 did her brother Edward offer them the rent-free use of Chawton Cottage, part of an estate he had inherited along with the much grander Chawton House nearby, an Elizabethan house now run as a museum.

During her more unsettled living circumstances in the early 1800s, Jane Austen did not produce much in the way of manuscripts, unlike the 1790s, when she drafted three of her novels: Northanger Abbey (published 1818), Pride and Prejudice (published 1813), and Sense and Sensibility (published 1811). It is impossible to know to what degree her reduced output was due to unhappiness (or perhaps what we would now call depression), and how much to the more socially demanding life she must have led whilst staying in Bath and as a guest of various family members.

What we do know is that after she moved to Chawton, she produced three more manuscripts: Mansfield Park (published 1814), Emma (published 1816), and Persuasion (published posthumously in 1818) and revised the drafts of her earlier novels, which she now saw published.

The rectory in Steventon was demolished in the early 1800s, and so the house at Chawton is a wonderful resource for understanding more about Jane Austen’s domestic life. The cottage is a 17th century house situated at the crossroads leading into Chawton village (it was at one time used as an inn).

During Jane Austen’s time the gardens would have included a kitchen garden and orchard, and you can still see the bakehouse and kitchen, and the bedroom Jane shared with her sister Cassandra.

A number of Jane's personal belongings are on display in the house, including jewellery, a quilt she made herself, and the surprisingly small writing table at which she is thought to have worked.

Jane Austen’s writing desk — grandfather clock for scale!

For any Austen fans, the house and the village of Chawton are well worth a visit, and are within 1.5-2 hours drive of London so can be easily visited as a day trip.

EASTBOURNE AND THE SEVEN SISTERS CLIFFS, EAST SUSSEX

Last weekend my husband and children departed for Scotland to visit the grandparents, and I found myself alone for the first time in what felt like forever. I decided on the spur of the moment to hop in the car and drive down to the East Sussex coast. I grew up in Sydney, beside the water, and the longer I live in London, the more I miss that sense of freedom and expansiveness you feel living by the sea. I needed fresh air and big horizons, and to be reminded that I do actually still live on an island!

Those of you who have followed me on Instagram for a while know that I love British seaside resorts in the off season — there’s something about their slight bleakness that appeals to me. I typically go to the Kent coast for my dose of sea air, but this time I went a bit further afield to Eastbourne, with its pier and shingle beach.

After a wander round the town I drove up to the white cliffs of Beachy Head on the South Downs, overlooking Eastbourne. 

And then finally I drove around to Cuckmere Haven, which has a wonderful view of the Seven Sisters cliffs. You could do this as a walk from Eastbourne or you can drive and then walk about a mile down to the beach. 

These lovely houses were originally coastguards’ cottages, built in the 1820s, and they’ve been used as a filming location for movies (the final scene of Atonement is filmed here) and TV series (Luther, Foyle’s War). They’re at risk of erosion and there is an ongoing campaign to protect them. 

It’s a beautiful and atmospheric spot, even more so because I was there at sunset and there were only a handful of people on the beach — I imagine in the summer it’s packed. 

I watched the moon rise over the beach until finally, reluctantly, I made my way back to my car and back to London.