I have written before about the fun of trying to guess the inspiration for the properties and estates which feature in the novels of Jane Austen. Northanger Abbey is a tricky one, but given the novel of the same name is Gothic in style, and the fact that the Austen family made multiple visits to the spooky ruins of Netley Abbey near Southampton when Jane was a girl, it does not take too much of a leap of imagination to suppose that Netley Abbey, while far from a complete and occupied property unlike the fictional Northanger Abbey, may have contributed to Jane’s interest in the Gothic, and therefore may have influenced her creation of Northanger Abbey.
Jane Austen grew up in Hampshire, and she and her sister Cassandra went to school in Southampton in 1783. It was probably during that time, and 10 years later when she stayed with her second cousin in Southampton, that she got to know the abbey. On one particular visit in 1807, it was not Jane but her niece Fanny who waxed lyrical about the site, describing it as a “compound of everything that is striking, ancient and majestic”, and how it “stands on an eminence, in the most romantic situation you can imagine, overgrown with ivy and concealed from your view by a high wood, down to the water’s edge” – the water in question being Southampton Water. Work on Jane’s novel Northanger Abbey began in 1798, and it is not known to what extent she had Netley Abbey in mind when inventing the Abbey of the novel, but given the above it seems highly likely that Netley was the inspiration for Northanger.
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| Eastrange. Photo by Coradia1000, via Wikimedia Commons |
The abbey is now managed by English Heritage, who on their website inform us that it is the most complete surviving abbey built by the Cistercian monks in Southern England. The abbey is open year round, with slightly reduced hours during the winter months. There are many spooky stories surrounding the abbey, which would have circulated around the time of Jane’s visits, including the story of an apparition dressed as a monk who appeared before a local undertaker who wanted to dismantle the church ruins. The monk warned him not to, but he disregarded the warning and was rewarded with a stone falling on his head and killing him.
Map of the area.
