Restoring Jane Austen’s final home with historic paint colours

In the final months of her life, Jane Austen lived with her sister Cassandra in a modest Georgian house on College Street in Winchester. More than two centuries later, Edward Bulmer was invited by Winchester College Heritage to help restore the rooms to their original appearance, using historic paint research to recreate the colours that surrounded the celebrated novelist in 1817.

The project offered a remarkable opportunity to bring an important piece of literary history to life through colour.

Uncovering the original Georgian colours

At 8 College Street, careful investigation of the building’s historic paint layers revealed evidence of the original Georgian decorative scheme.

By scraping back later finishes, traces of the earlier colours were uncovered, allowing Edward to develop bespoke paint shades based on the original decoration.

The resulting palette reflects the simplicity and character of the rooms occupied by Jane Austen and Cassandra during their time in Winchester.

Edward Bulmer on visiting Jane Austen’s final home

For Edward, who has long admired Austen’s writing, the project was especially moving.

“It is rare to feel the presence of a past life in an old house – they have hosted so many after all. I am someone who can anthropomorphise the skill required to fashion a piece of furniture or weave a carpet, I am also someone with a long-held devotion to the works of Jane Austen. Nevertheless, I was unprepared for how viscerally I felt her presence standing in the room in which she spent much of the last two months of her life.

It was a genteel but simple room in a Georgian house in College Street, Winchester.

Walls had since been changed and a staircase moved, but the character of the building not lost. The door to Jane’s room had a cylindrical brass knob which would have been recently fitted when her feeble hand turned it. Her presence was palpable – the simplicity of the interior was so in tune with what we know of her outlook and circumstances that it somehow deepened the sense of it.”

Recreating Jane Austen’s Georgian colour palette

Edward developed a series of bespoke colours for the restoration, informed by the surviving paint evidence and the pigments used in Georgian interiors.

The shades were named in recognition of Jane Austen’s time at College Street and the people associated with the house.

Jane’s White

For Jane Austen’s own room, Edward created a delicate white with only a small amount of pigment.

As he explains:

“Jane’s White required only a modicum of pigment to render it ‘the neat little drawing-room’ that Jane deemed it in a letter.”

The restrained colour reflects the simplicity of the room and the modest circumstances of Austen’s final months.

Cassandra’s Slate, Brownlow North’s Red and Mrs David’s Pink

The remaining rooms were given slightly stronger colours, created using cobalt blue and red and yellow ochre pigments.

Edward explains:

“Cassandra’s room and the room occasionally used by her brother were given a little more richness by the use of cobalt blue and red and yellow ochre pigments. Not expensive tints, but in reasonable quantities to give warm mid-colours, creating Brownlow North’s Red, Cassandra’s Slate and Mrs David’s Pink.”

The names themselves offer a connection to the house’s history. Brownlow North was Bishop of Winchester in 1817, when the diocese owned 8 College Street, while Mrs David was the property’s landlady.

Together, these colours help recreate the decorative character of the house during Austen’s brief residence.

Bringing history to life through colour

Historic paint research can reveal a great deal about the people who once inhabited a building. Even small surviving fragments offer clues to the materials, colours and decorative choices of another period.

Reflecting on the restoration, Edward observed:

“The fragmentary presence of these colours under subsequent layers, like the scant records of the Austen’s brief tenure, allowed a remarkably telling restoration, bolstered I believe by that strong sense of a remarkable soul that though failed in the end by a weak body, produced work of enduring popularity and prescience.”

At 8 College Street, the recreation of these original colours helps visitors imagine the rooms as Jane Austen might have known them, offering a more intimate understanding of the place where she spent her final months.

The project is a testament to the importance of historic colour research and the role that carefully considered paint can play in preserving the character of our architectural heritage.

Photography: Camilla Winter Moore