regency | Author, Jane Lark's stories

Recently, we went to Westbury Court Garden, a restored 17^thCentury Dutch Water Garden which survived the era of Capability Brown, and I have to say I am a sucker for Georgian Gardens. I have seen some beautiful vistas of orchestrated nature designed by Capability Brown and his like, some of them are truly amazing. It is really stunning the way they’ve framed views, but I do like the order of a Georgian garden and this was a good example. You will find in many of my books that owners have left the Georgina Gardens alone simply because I love them. But there are a couple of the best Regency gardens thrown in. I will save those descriptions for when the books are released though. However there was one point of real discovery when I looked around the garden at Westbury. In one of the gardens summer houses they had the black and white etched 17^thCentury picture mapping out the garden, and two other pictures of gardens. One of which was Dyrham Park, which I visit regularly as it’s nearBath. I have seen the Dyrham Park picture several times there, but these Gardens were lost and turned to open parkland and I always imagined them covering acres––in the style of Versailles. Yet looking at the Westbury Court picture you can see that the perspective made them look much bigger than they are, as at Westbury court you could map every feature. I could then map the few remaining features at Dyrham too, and realised it was not wider or longer than the current garden.

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.

See the side bar for details of Jane’s books and Jane’s website www.janelark.co.uk to learn more about Jane. Or click ‘like’ on Jane’s Facebook page to see photo’s and learn historical facts from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian eras, which Jane publishes there. You can also follow Jane on twitter at @janelark

In June my husband and I went to Stoneleigh Abbey near Warwick, Jane Austen’s cousin owned this property and she visited there with her mother not long after her father died, when they were required to live on the charity of family. They were going to live with her brother but he was not able to take them in yet and so they went to stay with a cousin who at that point inherited Stoneleigh Abbey. They travelled with him to claim his inheritance. On Wednesdays the house tour is a Jane Austen tour and they explain how – like me – she drew inspiration from her visit to the house for her books. There are even items there that are described in the books. And the story of Persuasion was inspired by the story she heard about an ancestor whose portrait hangs there. One of the things they discussed was Jane’s mother’s descriptions of their stay there in her letters. One fact I particularly drew from this was her descriptions of what they ate. Often notes on history are conflicting and a few authors include sausages for breakfast in descriptions – they did not eat breakfast was we do now. Jane’s Austen’s mother particularly extols the plum cake. Letters are a fabulous way of learning what life was really like in the Regency era and people wrote loads – think how many times you text or email – well they sent letters. I have a book of Lady Caroline Lamb’s letters (she of a spectacular affair with Lord Byron fame), Harriette Wilson’s memoires (a renowned courtesan of the era) and also Jane Austen’s letters to her sister. They give loads of details about life and fashion – fascinating – and when you read my books you will see these appear in them and loads of inspiration is taken from them.