On Sunday 6th July 2025 the historic and picturesque village of Steventon, Hampshire, will host the Jane Austen Regency Country Fair, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Jane Austen was born on 16th of December 1775 in the Rectory which stood in the very location where the Fair will be held.

With Regency attire actively encouraged (but not compulsory!), the field will be turned into a classical countryside scene with performances by the Hampshire Regency Dancers, Garston Gallopers, Alton Morris, Mayfly Morris, The Madding Crowd and local school children demonstrating Maypole dancing. There will be demonstrations of country arts and crafts as well as Jane Austen themed talks and performances and fete games, food, drinks and stalls. Special guests include historian, author and TV presenter Lucy Worsley OBE who will be giving talks, book signings and Q&As. Adrian Lukis – known to Austen aficionados as Mr Wickam in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride & Prejudice – will also be attending and participating in Q&As with fair goers.
Tickets are on sale now at the following link [TICKETS]

A concert of music written by composers featured in the Austen family music books with readings from Jane Austen’s novels and letters. It will include music by Pleyel and Dibden as well as the Jane Austen Suite by contemporary composer Phillip Andrews. The Austen collection consists of eighteen books owned by various members of the Austen family containing nearly 600 pieces of music, mainly songs, but also some instrumental music, from both European and British popular composers. Some of the pieces were copied into the books by Jane herself.

Astri Strings and Wind: Jude Barnby (cello) Victoria Stapleton (violin) Rosalyn Jones (flute and clarinet) Deborah Stanley (flute), Theresa Lunn (soprano), Michael Kenning (piano), Paul Wright (piano and organ).
With readings by Dorothy Smith and Julian Wadham

Tickets for this event are now on sale at the following [LINK]

Steventon is a small quiet village in the Hampshire borough of Basingstoke and Deane, surrounded by farms and woodland. It lies between the villages of Oakley to the east, Overton to the west, Ashe to the North and North Waltham to the south.

Steventon is recorded as a manor in the Domesday Book (1086), and there was certainly a manor here in Saxon times, which may have been in existence for several hundred years. At the time of Doomsday there is no mention of a church at Steventon although churches were recorded at the nearby villages of Ashe and Deane. It is possible that there was a Saxon church at Steventon, but we have no record of it. Alternatively there may instead have been a Saxon cross, around which the villagers would have buried their dead and travelling priests would have held religious services for the villagers.

Jane Austen was born in Steventon on the 16th December 1775. Steventon was her home for the first 25 years of her life providing inspiration for her novels “Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey” were penned here.