Middleton Hall (John Preston Neale)

Middleton Hall. John Preston Neale (1818). Image extracted from page 288 of volume 5 of “Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. L.P”, by John Preston Neale. Original held and digitised by the British Library. / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

This is the sort of house where Richard and Lydia will make their home. I really like that this house has the same shape and seems to have the same number of windows across the front and along the side as one of my favourite historic homes (Uniacke Estate Museum Park) that I like to visit here in Nova Scotia. It makes it easier to imagine how the fictitious house at Beaumont Park might be laid out inside. However, we’re only stopping here for the night in our story before the characters continue on to Netherfield and Longbourn.

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“Oh, it is lovely!” Kitty said as the Darcy carriage drove through the gate and toward the house at Beaumont Park the next afternoon. “Lydia must be delighted to know this will be her home.”

“And you will not be so very far from her,” Georgiana placed an arm around her friend and leaned against Kitty so she could also peer out the window. “I have not been here in some time.”

“It has been at least five years,” Fitzwilliam agreed. “However, I do think we will be stopping here more often on our way to and from Pemberley in the future since someone will be living here. I see the work on the chimney Richard told me about has begun.”

[from Protecting Miss Darcy, Marrying Elizabeth book 6]

~*~*~

Marrying Elizabeth, books 1-5

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Leenie Brown

Leenie Brown fell in love with Jane Austen's works when she first read Sense and Sensibility followed immediately by Pride and Prejudice in her early teens. As the second of five daughters and an avid reader, she has always loved to see where her imagination takes her and to play with and write about the characters she meets along the way. In 2013, these two loves collided when she stumbled upon the world of Jane Austen Fan Fiction. A year later, in 2014, she began writing her own Austen-inspired stories and began publishing them in 2015. Leenie lives in Nova Scotia, Canada with her two teenage boys and her very own Mr. Brown (a wonderful mix of all the best of Darcy, Bingley and Edmund with healthy dose of the teasing Mr. Tillney and just a dash of the scolding Mr. Knightley).

4 thoughts on “Middleton Hall (John Preston Neale)”

  2. Mrs. Bennet will certainly need her salts when she sees this house. It is good that it can be a stopping of place for sisters traveling to and fro when they visit each other. Oh, what fun.

    1. It’s a fine house, but it is not overly grand. (At least not in my mind as I am comparing it to the house I visit) I would think it might not even be as large as Longbourn since Richard has said Beaumont Park is a small estate and Longbourn was the principal estate in the area where it was. But Lydia will have a beautiful home, and I imagine the income will not be less than what she was used to at Longbourn, though it will be smaller than what Richard would have grown up with, of course.

      The house I visit that bears a similar shape and number of windows to this drawing has one sitting room, a dining room, a small library, a downstairs bedroom, two large bedrooms and three small bedrooms upstairs, as well as two smaller rooms that I believe were used by servants. (I know for sure one was and the other might have been a nursery at one time) This is what I am comparing this image to and close to what I am imagining for Lydia.

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