Jane Austen’s mother, Cassandra Leigh, was related to an aristocratic family.

Sir Thomas Leigh was Lord Mayor of London when Elizabeth I became Queen and in the following century, another Leigh was made a baron for helping the Royalists against Cromwell. The family became huge landowners, with estates mainly in the Midlands of England. Cassandra Leigh, the daughter of a clergyman, was a comparatively poor relation but kept in touch with some of her more wealthy family members.

After Jane’s father died in Bath in 1806, her mother took her daughters to Gloucestershire to stay with her cousins the Reverend Thomas Leigh and his sister Elizabeth at Adlestrop Rectory in the Cotswolds, near Moreton-in-Marsh and Stow-on-the-Wold.

These Leighs were godparents to Jane’s sister and one of her brothers. Another more distant cousin, James Henry Leigh, lived in the nearby manor house.

The Leighs were making great changes to the village and grounds on the advice of Humphry Repton (see photo on the left), a fashionable landscape designer, and the remodelled settings of Adlestrop may have influenced Henry Crawford’s description of Thornton Lacy in the novel Mansfield Park.

While the Austen women were staying with him, the Rev Thomas Leigh learned of the death of  a relative, the wealthy Honourable Mary Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, and that he was possibly in line to inherit. He and the Austens set off immediately  to stake a claim.

 

This was the ‘best drawing room’,

which Mrs Austen found ‘rather gloomy’,

and has been re-designed as a really lovely library.

 Photo: Stoneleigh Abbey

 

Jane’s mother, writing to her daughter-in-law from Stoneleigh, gave a detailed description of the stately home. “I had no idea of its being so beautiful,” she wrote.“The Avon runs near the house, amidst green meadows, bounded by large and beautiful woods, full of delightful walks.” The house was so large that they could not find their way about it, she went on.

Mrs Austen mentioned a visit to nearby Kenilworth Castle and plans for an excursion to Warwick.

After 10 days, the Austen women moved on and never revisited; however the Abbey and Stoneleigh are believed to have been the inspirations for Sotherton Court and the nearby village in the novel Mansfield Park.