page_title: Oakley Hall, Hampshire
section_title: Jane Austen and Oakley Hall
hierarchical_section_title: Oakley Hall, Hampshire / Jane Austen and Oakley Hall
caption_attribution_description: Colorized version of engraved depiction of Jane Austen. This is several steps removed from an authentic portrait (from the original Cassandra Austen drawing to the 1870 Memoir engraving to other engravings in imitation of the 1870 engraving, then add color)
context_page_description: Oakley Hall is a Georgian manor in Oakley, Hampshire, located 10 km to the west of Basingstoke. Completed in 1795 by Wither Bramston, the building is now a hotel and conference centre. It is located in a wooded park intersected by the
  former South Western railway.
context_section_description: Jane Austen lived with her parents at the Rectory near the Church in Steventon (shown on the map). Oakley Hall was one of her closest neighbours and she often liked to walk to there to see her friends the Bramstons. At this time there were three Bramstons living at the Hall – Wither Bramston, his wife Mary and his unmarried sister Augusta Bramston. In her letters to her sister Cassandra Jane recalled how she enjoyed her visits. She mentioned that she ate some sandwiches with mustard and praised Wither Bramston’s porter (beer). She also admired Mary Bramston’s transparencies which were decorations for the window. According to a biographer of Jane Austen this hobby was recalled years later when she described three similar transparencies as adornments of Fanny Price’s East Room at Mansfield Park.
  In the same letter she mentioned that Mary Bramston promised to give her two medicinal plants called heartsease “one all yellow and one all purple”. Then all of them walked down to the village of Oakley where they bought ten pairs of worsted stockings and a shift.
  The Austens had no carriage and therefore when attending functions they were often invited by their neighbours to travel with them. Since Oakley Hall was so close the Bramstons usually extended this invitation. In one of her letters Jane outlines in detail a Ball that has just been held at Basingstoke. She says that “a very civil note of invitation for me came from Mrs Bramston who wrote I believe as soon as she knew of the Ball.
caption: Jane Austen
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