Help us write the next chapter of the story of Jane Austen's House, as we look to carry out vital restoration work to our Courtyard Buildings.

This historic group of buildings have been supporting the daily running of the house for centuries and have fascinating stories to tell us about everyday life for Jane Austen and her wider household. In these rooms, the bread was baked, clothes washed, beer brewed, and the harvest from the garden stored against the winter.

Now they are in urgent need of restoration and we need your help as we work to safeguard their future and bring their past to life.

We need to completely strip and retile the roofs, as well as repairing underlying timberwork and repointing the chimneys. This will be the first stage of the project and must start from early spring 2024. With your help, we will be able to make these buildings watertight, and structurally sound for many decades to come.

The next stage will be to restore the Bakehouse, and to start to develop a living history programme. Thanks to Martha Lloyd's Household Book, we know the sort of food and drink that might have been made here, but we know much less about the lives of the people who worked in the Bakehouse, or of the washerwomen who came in to help the household.

This project will bring these lost stories back to life, and help us to create a full picture of life at Jane Austen's House. Imagine visiting on washday, or tasting bread just baked from the historic brick bread oven. With your help, we hope to be able to achieve this, and to deepen and enrich our understanding of Austen's world.

Together we can bring the lost past of Jane Austen's House back to life, and ensure that these fascinating historic buildings are here to tell their tales for generations to come.

Thank you for being a part of the story.