Jane Austen Festival 2014 Regency Promenade in Bath
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| The Jane Austen Festival Promenade |
On Saturday, Bath stepped back in time to its Georgian heyday. The streets were full of Jane Austen enthusiasts dressed up in Regency costume for the Jane Austen Festival Grand Regency Costumed Promenade.
Here's Andrew's video of the parade...
...and lots of photos from my three lovely photographers - my husband Andrew, his brother Stephen and our youngest daughter Mirabelle.
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| The Jane Austen Festival Promenade Photo © Stephen Knowles |
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| The Jane Austen Festival Promenade Photo © Stephen Knowles |
A new world record!
We met in the beautiful Georgian Assembly Rooms, where we successfully set a new world record for the most people dressed up in Regency costume in one place: 550! And that could have been more as people were still arriving after the official count as a rugby match and a university open day also taking place on Saturday had caused more than a few Austenites to be delayed by traffic.
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| Rachel outside the Assembly Rooms Photo © Mirabelle Knowles |
Regency Bath
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| Soldiers on parade Photo © Stephen Knowles |
The promenade was led by a dashing group of redcoats and staff from the Jane Austen Centre. We paraded through much of the Georgian city including the very fashionable Circus, where the painter Thomas Gainsborough and the Earl of Chatham once lived, and down Milsom Street, where Regency ladies would have visited the circulating library and gone shopping.
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| Soldiers on parade |
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| Parading around The Circus Photo © Mirabelle Knowles |
The atmosphere was amazing. We were all joined together by our love of the Regency period and it was great to make new friends as we walked in the footsteps of Jane Austen, who lived in Bath for several years and set parts of two of her novels there – Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
Meeting Mr Wickham
An extra special moment for me was meeting the charming Adrian Lukis alias Mr Wickham from the superlative 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
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| Meeting Mr Wickham (Adrian Lukis) Photo © Mirabelle Knowles |
Photographs in the park
The promenade ended in the Parade Gardens alongside the River Avon – a beautiful setting for a picnic and photographs.
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| A Regency picnic in the park |
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| The Jane Austen Festival - in Parade Gardens Photo © Stephen Knowles |
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| The Jane Austen Festival Promenade - in Parade Gardens |
Silhouettes and milliners
After the promenade, I visited the Festival Fayre in the Guildhall where I had my silhouette cut out by the amazing Charles Burns – The Roving Artist – and tried on a wide variety of exquisite hats and bonnets made by Farthingale Historical Hats.
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| The Roving Artist at work |
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| My silhouette by The Roving Artist |
Yet more photographs
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| The Jane Austen Festival Promenade Photo © Stephen Knowles |
I thoroughly enjoyed wearing my Regency costume for the first time and am looking forward to meeting up with everyone again next year.
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| Rachel with Natalie Garbett (left) who made my beautiful Regency costume Photo © Stephen Knowles |
Rachel Knowles writes clean/Christian Regency era romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.
Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.
Read about the making of my costume here.
More photographs of the Jane Austen Festival on Andrew's Flickr account, on Mirabelle's photography page and on Stephen's Flickr album here.
Photographs © Mirabelle Knowles and Stephen Knowles as stated.
All other photographs © Andrew Knowles.
