Jane Austen’s “Library Passage” at risk

Library PassageA friend from the Jane Austen Society Midlands (a chapter of the UK Jane Austen society) has asked me to pass along this threat to a connection to Jane’s real life and her unfinished novel Sanditon. Apparently a right of way that allowed passage from Stanford Cottage to Stafford’s Library in Worthing (where the Austen family stayed after the death of Jane’s father), may be blocked because of safety concerns.

I’ll let Christopher Sandrawich, membership secretary for the Midlands branch, explain it as he did in this e-mail to me:

“Our little Midlands society went to Worthing last year and I wrote up our trip and it will appear in this year’s issue of Transactions. … Jane Austen and family visited Worthing in the autumn of 1805 (Jane’s father had died earlier that same year) as it was in progress from a fishing village towards a seaside resort and she met Mr Ogle who is in all probability ‘Mr Parker’ in her unfinished work Sanditon. The next town, Broadwater is a close fit for ‘Old Sanditon’ and Jane and family stayed at Stanford’s Cottage in Worthing and would have used the Library Passage to gain access not only to the Library but the sea front and the bathing machines.

“A bus company who have a bus station where the library used to be want to stop up this right-of-way citing safety grounds, in the main. Now I know getting excited about safety is more popular nowadays than in former years but safety considerations did not seem to bother the bus company or anyone else when they sited the bus staion there in the first place. Once it is taken out of use as a right-of-way it can never be replaced again and one more small part of British history along with the associations with Jane Austen will be lost. Stanford’s Cottage is now a Pizza Express by the way but it does have a plaque on the wall commemerating Jane’s stay.”

Now being in America and having never visited Worthing and not knowing the concerns of the bus company, it’s not my place to issue a call to action to protect the passage. I don’t want to say the bus company is unfeeling or uncaring or plundering history. But I hope a way can be found to maintain this passage, keep everyone safe and keep this link to Jane Austen and the connection to Sanditon. And if you want to show your support for maintaining the passage, you can contact me through the comments and I’ll send you an email address for the Jane Austen Society.

UPDATE: Mr. Sandrawich assures me it is OK to include this extract from the upcoming Transactions article about the society’s visit to Worthing:

So, what of Worthing the place? It is clear that the town is struggling through the doldrums given the number of estate agents’ signs over empty shop fronts, but it is pleasant enough to stroll through, and you can always find something of interest. For example, the history of English is varied and fascinating and along with so many new words we have some that are very old, and still in use. Worthing has an interesting old Sussex dialect word, twitten, said to be a corruption of ‘betwixt and between’ although the on-line Oxford Dictionary suggests it is an early 19th Century word (unbelievably!) perhaps related to Low German twiete ‘alley, lane’, used for a path or an alleyway. It is still in common use in both East and West Sussex, and oddly enough in Hampstead Garden Suburb. As tussen, steggen or steeg in the Netherlands has a similar meaning it would be all too easy to assume that source as the derivation. Such pathways between buildings have other names around the world, but elsewhere in England twittens are called variously, twitchells (north-west Essex, east Hertfordshire and Nottingham), chares (north-east England, especially Newcastle), ginnels — which can also be spelt jennels or gennels — (Manchester, Oldham, Sheffield and south Yorkshire), opes (Plymouth), jiggers or entry (Liverpool), gitties or jitty (Derbyshire and Leicestershire), snickleways or snicket (York), shuts (Shropshire) and are called vennels in Scotland; but it is not known what our Jane called them, but it is very likely she may have called the “Library Passage” shown on the right [the photo at the beginning of this blog post] a twitten as Jane used it with her family to get from Stanford Cottage to Stafford’s Library, as well as the sea front. This fine example of a Worthing twitten is just off Warwick Street, and only a lady’s baseball (see Northanger Abbey) throw from Stanford Cottage. Janet Clarke informed me that this twitten is currently under threat from a bus company, Stagecoach, who owns the land and wish to “stop it up” permanently. This twitten now runs from Warwick Street into the bus depot. Of course, anything being an ancient historic “right of way” for the ordinary people of England and Wales does not put off Companies from making such proposals whenever it suits the moment. Look at it again, while you have the chance, and if this twitten through your half-closed eyes and with some imagination resembles a footpath through dense woodland; then, there you have it.

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