Harpsden

Extract from chapter 29

1793: Harpsden

More happy news followed from Edward Cooper, who had become engaged to Caroline, the daughter of Mr and Mrs Lybbe-Powys. Their wedding was to be in the spring, whereafter he would take up the living of St. Margaret’s Church in Harpsden.

The bride’s uncle Tom Powys - now infamous in the family for serving the king - was to officiate the ceremony.

Photo: St. Margaret's Church, Harpsden, Oxfordshire.

Photo: St. Margaret's Church, Harpsden, Oxfordshire.

Mrs Austen was delighted for her nephew and duly sent her blessings, but if she was being perfectly honest, she was more excited by the happy coincidences that this union had thrown together.

Photo: St.Margaret's Church, Harpsden, Oxfordshire.

Not only was her nephew to be wed by the same life-long friend who had officiated her own ceremony, but St. Margaret’s Church in Harpsden was the living her father had held when he was alive.

Photo: St. Margaret's Church, Harpsden, Oxfordshire.

The rectory where Edward and Caroline would live was the very same house that Mrs Austen had grown up in with her brother and sister.

She could not stop chattering about how much she looked forward to visiting there again and seeing Edward settled in the house that had once been the dwelling of his grandparents.

She promised to tell him all the childhood tales from the old rectory that she could remember, and she educated him on the features of each of its rooms

Photo: Public road, Harpsden Bottom, Oxfordshire.

Photos: Public road, Harpsden Bottom, Oxfordshire.

She urged her nephew to make the most of the tranquil surroundings, where peace and beauty were in abundance, and she could not have wished for a better outcome than to see him walking in the same footsteps trod by his late mother.