The village lies within the South Downs National Park[2] and is famous as the home of Jane Austen for the last eight years of her life.

The descendants of John Knight, who built the present Chawton House at the time of the Armada (1588), added to it and modified the landscape in ways that reflect changes in politics, religion and taste.

[5] Chawton’s private parliamentary enclosure took place in 1740-1 when a bad harvest followed a severe winter and eighteen food riots were recorded over large parts of the country.

[8] From lists in Leigh’s book of Chawton Manor, one might have expected over thirty families to have held an interest, but all but one were already gone, not just from the Commons, but, soon, from the village entirely.

In 1605, a court held by John Knight recognised that for the last thirty or forty years a ‘great part’ of the commons had been enclosed by tenants with the consent of the lord.

His existing local estate already comprised fifteen houses and 1,569 acres: 734 of arable land, 108 of pasture, 56 meadow, 615 woodland and 55 rough heath.

[10] Knight’s allotment was increased by the herbage of all the highways on the Common, and, because he was the lord, ‘free liberty’ by June 1742 to ‘sell, cut down, grub up, take, cart, and carry away’ all the timber trees, pollard trees, bushes and wood, anywhere on the Common for which his workmen could enter any allotment at any time.

[13] The churchyard was reserved for burial for the Knight family, and the graves include that of Jane Austen's mother and sister, both called Cassandra.

Just down the road from this is a Fuller's pub called The Greyfriar which has an oak beamed traditional bar, a secluded beer garden and a large car park.