Allenham is the home of Mrs. Smith, a widow who plans to leave her estate to John Willoughby. It is located in Devonshire.
Architecture and Decor
Allenham appears to be a distinguished and stately older home. Before the Dashwood women are acquainted with Willoughby, they observe it to be “an ancient respectable looking mansion.” Later on, we are led to believe that Allenham is quite an inheritance for Willoughby and considerably nicer--or at least more prestigious--that his current home of Combe Magna. Mrs. Jennings builds on this idea by calling the house “very large” but also hoping that Marianne, whom she expects will be the mistress eventually, will “new furnish” it, “for it wanted it very much when [she] was there six years ago.”
After seeing it with her own eyes, Marianne goes on at some length about the house, saying “there is one remarkably pretty sitting room up stairs; of a nice comfortable size for constant use, and with modern furniture it would be delightful….I did not see it to advantage, for nothing could be more forlorn than the furniture,—but if it were newly fitted up—a couple of hundred pounds, Willoughby says, would make it one of the pleasantest summer-rooms in England."
Park, Gardens and Land
We are told that the house is “About a mile and a half from the cottage, along the narrow winding valley of Allenham, which issued from that of Barton.”
From Marianne’s narration, we know there is a bowling-green behind the house as well as “a beautiful hanging wood.” In another direction from the house (presumably the left or right side as Marianne describes being able to see both of these views from a single room), one can see the church and village, which abut “fine bold hills.”
