Petty France, Gloucestershire a result of this the speed through the two hamlets was reduced to 40 MPH. Badminton and Hawkesbury Upton are also nearby. The Manor House in Petty France was built in 1812 for Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, prime minister from 1812 to 1827. The house has seen the likes of Lord Wellington, and has been in the ownership of the poet Wordsworth's family, Lord and Lady Apsley and the Duke of Beaufort; today it is a hotel. In her novel Northanger Abbey (written in 1803, but not published until 1817), Jane Austen mentions Petty France as a dull
Northanger Abbey a portion of the novel's last sentence for the epigraph to Chapter 50 in his "Watership Down"; the reference to the General is felicitous, as the villain in "Watership Down" is also a General. The book, also, contains an early historical reference to baseball. It is found in the first chapter of the novel, describing the interest of the heroine : "...Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country...". It is not the earliest reference to the term, which is presently believed to be in a 1744