I've just discovered five photos of Chawton House I've never seen before.

They show the Old Kitchen in 1988, just after we left. And I'm not going to lie—sharing them is difficult. It's embarrassing. But recording the truth and reality of our lives at Chawton House is part of my responsibility, regardless of how uncomfortable it might be.

The Old Kitchen is where Jane Austen's meals were prepared on a 17th-century bench. By my childhood, it had become an abandoned storage room.

These newly discovered photos show it empty after we vacated. Dusty. Abandoned. The reality of what happens when a family hangs onto a house it can no longer afford.

This is exactly what I'm preserving in The Austen Knights of Chawton – A Family Archive—not just the grandeur, but the truth.

New article with the photos and the story of the estate's financial collapse.