The house in Warwick Street where Jane Austen stayed in 1805, which still stands today, was called Stanford’s Cottage. It was a charming dwelling, whose south-facing bow windows in those days had an uninterrupted view to the sea. On the Warwick Street side there was a paved courtyard with a pair of gates and an old chestnut tree in the middle.
The north side of Warwick Street had not yet been built, nor had Ann Street, which had only recently been upgraded from a farm-track. The outlook from the north frontage of Stanford’s Cottage was therefore over fields and a few scattered buildings towards the houses on what is now North Street, with the Downs beyond. In spite of the improvements gradually taking place in Worthing during the first decade of the 19th century, Jane Austen and her party would have found the town very quiet and provincial.
Their pleasures would therefore have been simple ones, such as walks in the country and visits to the libraries, to Wicks’s warm baths on the seafront – we know that Cassandra went there on 20 September – and to grand houses in the locality.
Nonetheless, Jane Austen’s stay in Worthing clearly left a big impression on her; and when, over a decade later, in January 1817, she started writing her final novel, she set it in a small Sussex resort town she called Sanditon – which is Worthing in all but name.
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