Themed House Tours

We offer a range of informative and engaging House Tours, to introduce your students to Jane Austen's life and world outside the classroom.

Standard Guided Tour

Explore the house where Jane Austen spent the last eight years of her life and learn about her wide-reaching legacy that has shaped the literary world for over 200 years. This tour provides valuable context, showcasing the relationships Jane Austen had with her family and friends, and revealing the stories behind objects she knew well.

‘The hopes of the nation’: Action and Adventure Tour

Do your students have what it takes to stop an invasion from Napoleon’s forces? In this exciting interactive session, students are invited to explore Jane Austen’s House in a brand-new way. Working in small groups they will take on the role of the Prince Regent’s Spies, solving puzzles and cracking codes in each room to uncover the details of a threatened invasion! This lively session is inspired by an escape room; it encourages lateral thinking, problem-solving and teamwork, whilst also teaching valuable global context – and it’s a lot of fun!

Novel-Themed Tours: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park

Step into one of Jane Austen’s novels with a specially developed House Tour, themed around the novel of your choice. Each unique tour uses objects from the collection and spaces in the House itself to reveal more about the book – from themes and places to characters and events – and to help the story come to life.

‘Think Like a Curator’ Tour

This special tour offers an insight into what it’s like to work in a museum and into the history of Jane Austen’s House and its remarkable collection. Led by a member of the curatorial team, it explores how we look after and display objects, how we tell stories and present information, and how the Museum came into being in the 1940s.

‘Gadding about the village’: Friends, Neighbours and Inspiration in Jane Austen’s Chawton

Jane Austen was famously inspired by country villages very like the real-life village of Chawton, where she had her greatest period of creativity. This active session takes your group out into the village itself to gain historical insight into Jane Austen’s life and inspirations, from the people and places she knew well to lost aspects of village life that are celebrated in her novels.

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