Hampshire better to visit than the Galapagos Islands? It's not so crazy as you might think

Jane Austen's England — and Hampshire in particular — are being lauded in the anniversary year of the author's birth. And quite rightly so, says Kate Green.

Mottisfont is one of Hampshire's many highlights.
Mottisfont is one of Hampshire's many highlights.
(Image credit: Steve Sayers / National Trust Images)

In case you are wondering, the place to go on holiday this year is, according to The New York Times’s 50 places to visit in 2025, Jane Austen’s England. Yes, Hampshire trumps the Galápagos Islands, New York’s own revamped museum spaces, the Indian state of Assam, White Lotus Thailand — and Greenland. The next European destination listed is Cézanne’s home town of Aix-en-Provence, France, in seventh place.

The Austen salutation cites, of course, celebrations for the 250th anniversary of her birth, many of which are in Hampshire, at her birthplace of Steventon, her brother’s home at Chawton and her grave in Winchester Cathedral. Austenmania shows no signs of abating and Hampshire, a county rarely mentioned in the same breath for holidays as Devon or Norfolk, should make the most of it.

Away from the rat-runs to the capital, it’s a county of quiet enchantments: buried farms, tiny lanes, squat, rural churches, such as atmospheric, whitewashed, 11th-century St Hubert’s, Idsworth, planted in the middle of a field. Its landscapes include the 1,000-year-old New Forest, where fallow deer, ponies and pigs wander and ancient commoning customs prevail. Its clear chalkstreams, inspiration for Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies, are paradise for fishermen; its mystical, high barrows, where racehorses gallop on the skyline, were the playground of the rabbits of Watership Down; its rippling grasslands are strongholds of chalk hill blue butterflies, bee orchids, skylarks and hares. The 70-mile Wayfarers’ Walk takes the wanderer from high on the west Berkshire border down to the Solent coast.

"Hampshire is having its big moment"

Roses bloom at Mottisfont Abbey, rhododendrons at Exbury; boats bob on the Hamble as motorcars roar at Beaulieu. In St Mary’s Church in Selborne, an enchanting stained-glass window features naturalist Gilbert White’s tortoise, Timothy; top-class opera echoes over the water meadows where owls swoop beside The Grange, Alresford; high-octane polo is played at Tidworth and county cricket at the Utilita Bowl in Southampton. Izaak Walton, of The Compleat Angler fame, has a pub named after him in East Meon; cricket’s hero Thomas Lord does in West Meon.

Austen set Mansfield Park in Hampshire and had her heroine Fanny Price living in the naval base of Portsmouth, where Charles Dickens, a son of the city, depicted Nicholas Nickleby serendipitously finding theatre work. P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster were regular visitors, including to the fictional Deverill Hall in The Mating Season. The Mountbattens, de Rothschilds, Guinnesses, Carnarvons, horticulturalist Sir Harold Hillier, painter Susie Whitcombe, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, broadcaster Esther Rantzen, Olympic eventer Lucinda Green and garden supremo Alan Titchmarsh have all made the county their home — and little wonder. It seems that Hampshire is having its big moment.

This piece appears as the leader article in Country Life's issue of January 22, 2025.


The Beaulieu Millennium beacon, erected in 2000. Lepe House, Hampshire.
(Image credit: Jason Ingram)

The Hampshire house and garden where D-Day was planned is now a haven with sun-drenched views across calm azure sea to the Isle of Wight

Once the haunt of smugglers and sailors, the Hampshire seashore now shelters a garden where pre- and interwar plantings sit

American art collector and millionairess Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) in the entrance hall of her eighteenth century Venetian palace. Hanging from the ceiling is a 1941 Alexander Calder mobile and behind her is Picasso's 'On The Beach'.
(Image credit: Keystone Features/Stringer via Getty)

Before the palazzo there was Petersfield: The Hampshire cottage where Peggy Guggenheim learned to love the art world

Humble Yew Tree Cottage stands in stark contrast to the excesses of this great art collector, but was a formative

Gilbert White Memorial Stained Glass Window at St.Mary's Church, Selborne.
(Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)

Gilbert White stained glass, Selborne: The beautiful tribute to a pioneering naturalist

Gilbert White's home church contains a fascinating memorial to the writer.

Kate Green
Kate is the author of 10 books and has worked as an equestrian reporter at four Olympic Games. She commutes in from Berkshire, but her favourite place in the UK is Exmoor, close to where she grew up in West Somerset.
Read more
How to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen
nra4UH8vBZmCDcYQM395Q.jpg
Country Life 22 January 2025
VisBBbhK2ANn4qaCpX2m5i.jpg
Dawn Chorus: The train line in Yorkshire named as one of the world's top things to do in 2025
Man and woman under a tree
Everything you need to know about Hampstead: The real star of 'Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy'
Cover of Country Life February 5, 2025
Country Life 5 February 2025
Two women walking in a meadow with a big stone building in the background
‘I don’t want to oversell it but they are the best pumpkin pancakes in the universe’: Country Life’s unbeatable guide to Oxfordshire
Latest in Travel
Lego House at night
Art, architecture and plastic bricks at Lego House: 'It's as if the National Gallery set up easels and paints next to the masterpieces and invited you try your hand at creating a Van Gogh'
Green banks of the Mississippi
How to cruise in the wake of Mark Twain on the great Mississippi River of the American South
PoB Hotels
Great garden getaways
Basil's Bar in Mustique
From party island to arty island, Princess Margaret's private Mustique haunt announces burgeoning arts programme
Gondola boats infront of a cathedral in Venice
‘It is as real and lasting as any other relationship I know of’: Everything you need to know about Venice in time for the 2025 Biennale Architettura
Pretty stone house surrounded by lush gardens
The Barnsdale in Rutland: Is this the UK’s most dog-friendly hotel?
Latest in Features
Aquamarine and diamond tiara
How Cartier became ‘the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers’
dogs on Country Life 26 March 2025
Country Life 26 March 2025
Jade tiled bathroom
A tub carved from a single block of San Marino marble — and nine more beautiful things for the ultimate bathroom
Images of Edwardian Ashton House, near Chard
Eight bedrooms of unlisted Edwardian elegance with sweeping views of Somerset
Iron Age artefacts
Archaeologists in North Yorkshire discover ‘the biggest and most important Iron Age hoard ever found in Britain’
Doors
Cath Harries — The photographer on a 15-year quest to find the most incredible doors in London