THE ‘Sitting with Jane’ BookBench trail was officially launched in Alton on Monday with the unveiling at Crown Hill gardens of the bench that has been designed and painted, in floral Regency style, by a group of students from Treloar College.

Entitled ‘Bench and Benchability’, the Alton seat, along with a vibrant ‘Woodwalk’ bench in Chawton, designed and painted by artist Caroline Fairburn, are part of an inspirational Jane Austen-themed art trail covering the north of Hampshire, incorporating 24 BookBenches, each one completely different but designed to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death of the author and to attract tourists to the area where she lived.

Made of laminated resin and fibreglass, the £5,000 cost of each bench has been donated by sponsors, to also cover gratuity for the artists and installation.

The benches will be on show until the end of August, during which time there will be free public access, accompanied by a free-to-download app and a trail guide, with details available from various outlets in the town, including the Town Hall and the Alton Herald office on the Market Square.

Run in partnership with Destination Basingstoke, a not-for-profit organisation working to promote the town and its surrounding area, the ‘Wild in Art’ BookBench trail links locations key to the life of Jane Austen, including Steventon, near Basingstoke, where she was born in December 1775 and lived for the early part of her life; the village of Chawton, near Alton, where she lived from 1808 and wrote and published her most significant work; and Winchester, where she died in 1817.

While Jane is buried at Winchester Cathedral, her mother and sisters are buried in the churchyard at St Nicholas Church, and Jane Austen’s House in Chawton has become a museum, attracting many thousands of visitors per year. The family used to shop in Alton, and Jane’s brother, Henry, had the Austen Bank on Crown Hill, while brother Edward married into the Knight family and took on ownership of Chawton House, now a library dedicated to the study of early women’s writing.

The Alton bench has been sponsored by Alton Town Council, Glanfield Holmlund, Wettone Matthews accountants, NHS Retirement Fellowshi: Alton, Cllr Andrew Joy (HCC), LFM accountants, Cllr Tony Costigan (EHDC), The Alton Society, Homes Estate Agents, Bookers & Bolton solicitors, The Herald, Alton College, BCoT, Alton Convent School, Turbex Ltd, and ChoLily café.

The Chawton bench has been sponsored by councillors Tony Costigan and Dean Phillips (EHDC) and Andrew Joy (Hampshire County Council).

Speaking at the launch, Alton mayor Dean Phillips paid tribute to the sponsors and to the many artists who submitted designs for the Alton bench, among them students from Alton College, as well as the winning team from Treloar. The result he described as “stunning” - a fitting addition to Alton Regency Week, now in its 10th year, and to the town itself.

“Alton really is Jane Austen’s town,” he said.

Also present was Mark Jones, director of fundraising and communications for the Ark Cancer Centre at Basingstoke, the charity partner in the project who will benefit when the benches are auctioned off on September 15, with 75 per cent of the takings going to Ark.

The money will go toward the building of a new cancer centre to serve Hampshire Hospitals, providing a state-of-the-art facility for patients living in the North Hampshire area, including Alton.

In expressing a wish that people not only look at the benches but take time out to follow the trail, Mr Jones said that while this had been “a challenging project” it was also “an absolutely worthwhile one”.

In thanking Alton business development manager Julie McLatch for being “the driving force” behind the project in the Alton area, Mr Jones described the benches and the trail as “unique” and one that had already seen the unlocking, by more than 800 people, of the ‘Sitting with Jane’ app in just three days.