House, Gardens & Cafe Open Tuesday - Sunday 10.30 - 17.00

SOLD OUT: Creative Footsteps: Autumnal Flora Selborniensis Walk

Part of the Creative Footsteps Festival 

Wednesday 6th October

11am-1pm

Join Gilbert White’s House & Garden’s director Steve Green for a walk around Gilbert White’s Selborne. In the year 1766 Gilbert White made a year long study of the Flora of the village in his Flora Selborniensis, Steve will point out during the walk the sites of Gilbert White’s findings and point out the amazing flora and fungi’s that can be found in Selborne today.

Between 2 and 10 October the area’s first Nature and Literary Festival will celebrate local literary greats and their love of the East Hampshire countryside. Follow in the footsteps of author Jane Austen, our first ecologist and naturalist Gilbert White, the wartime poet Edward Thomas and more. You can enjoy short guided nature walks, writing and poetry workshops, garden tours, trails, Yoga and more.

    Gilbert Whites House

    Gilbert White was aged 7 or 8 when the White family moved from the Vicarage on Selborne’s Plestor, to this house, called ‘The Wakes’ (named after the Wake family who had lived here previously). At that time the property would have been no more than a ‘two up, two down’  but over the subsequent years lots of extensions and additions have been made, creating the long sizeable house you see today.

    The rooms have been restored following descriptions in White’s own correspondence and include a chair he used at Oriel College, Oxford (loaned from the College), items of contemporary furniture, family portraits and bed hangings embroidered for him by his aunts.

    On display is the original manuscript of his book, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, which was purchased with generous help from English Heritage and others.

    Learn more