
A few days ago I had the great pleasure of finally meeting Christina Boyd face-to-face and visiting Jane’s house together, along with Mira Magdo from ‘Obsessed with Mr Darcy’.
It was a delight to work with Christina on ‘The Darcy Monologues’ and to chat with her online, but just as I imagined, meeting her face-to-face was even better.
What a fun day of chats and giggles as we made lavender bags, explored the cottage and the exquisite Great House and made jaw-dropping discoveries in intriguing places!
Jane’s house was as charming as ever. Perhaps even more so, because now two of the rooms in the house have been restored to their Regency glory.
Thanks to some very fortunate finds it was possible to recreate a look that Jane Austen would have recognised. Fragments of the original wallpaper were discovered behind wood-panels and on the former site of a built-in bookcase. They were analysed and found to match patterns available in 1809. Then they were painstakingly and lovingly reproduced as faithfully as possible, using the original method of block-printing – so that now we have the joy of seeing those two rooms just as they were when Jane lived there.
The newly refurbished rooms in Jane’s house pose no such conundrums, and to say that they are pleasing to the eye is an understatement. I haven’t had the privilege of seeing them by candlelight, but it’s an incredible feeling to think that as she sat to play the piano or write a letter, this is the pattern her eyes had drifted to.
