North Wessex Downs of the AONB can be found Watership Down where the book "Watership Down" by Richard Adams is set, to the north of the small market town of Whitchurch, Hampshire. Significant parts of "Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy are set on and in the villages connected to the Berkshire Downs. The Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty was designated in 1972. It is currently managed by a Council of Partners whose members are: North Wessex Downs The North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) (also known as the Chalkenwolds) is located in the English counties of West Berkshire, Hampshire,
Georgian society in Jane Austen's novels homes in which Jane Austen's novels are set are all situated in the southern half of England, and with the sole exception of Mansfield Park, in counties and towns she knew personally. It is characteristic of Jane Austen's period that all sorts of houses exist there side by side, houses of very different origins, periods and status, and that the characters in her novels are sensitive to these differences. This diversity is the reflection of the successive strata of the English habitat. Jane Austen's heroines thus occupy cottages (Barton Cottage in "Sense and Sensibility"), abbeys converted into vast residences (the