A country house with "well-proportioned rooms" where a young Jane Austen apparently partied down is not much longer for this earthly realm. As the Independent reports, Ashe Park House, near Basingstoke, is set for demolition, to the angst of Austen fans and locals alike. The current owners, Shuk Ting Sharon Leung and Gillian Sin Hang Ho, who picked up the property for a lowly $22 million in 2022, have won approval to demolish the building and replace it with a "traditional country house." They argued that the house looks "tired and unmanaged" and argued it "lacks architectural merit," per the Telegraph. Therein lies the plot.
Austen referenced going to balls and various social functions at Ashe Park House in letters to her sister, Cassandra, which gave locals and fans alike an emotional tie to the house. "I would be extremely sorry to see this house disappear from our local landscape and would feel very let down by our local planners if this was allowed to go ahead," says one local. But a rep for the Basingstoke and Deane Council, which granted the application for demolition, contends that the current house would largely be unrecognizable to Austen.
"The current Ashe Park House is primarily a 20th century building, with some walling fabric dating from the 1860s," the rep said. Historic England had previously refused to list the 232-acre property, saying that there is "no evidence that this earlier building is embedded in the current house of 1865," nor did it have "any direct influence on her literary output." Austen was born a mile away from Ashe Park House in 1775, and would have attended social events there in the 1790s, notes the Telegraph. (More Jane Austen stories.)
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