Students take a dip in Jane Austen’s world
Emma Wyeth’s mother was an English teacher who named her daughter after one of Jane Austen’s most celebrated characters. Now, the 22-year-old design student has paid her own tribute to the famous author by helping design and build a Regency bathing machine that’s part of a Jane Austen exhibition at the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery.
Austen, who was born in Steventon, Hampshire, is best known for her six novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. The many film and TV adaptations of her work include the 1995 mini-series Pride and Prejudice which starred Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. A scene in which Firth takes a dip in a lake has become one of the most iconic moments in British television history.
Firth’s Mr Darcy had no need of a bathing machine, a small carriage that could be rolled into the sea to allow men and women to take a dip without compromising their ‘decency’. The replica on display at the Jane Austen: Down to the Sea exhibition was designed and built by Emma and 21-year-old Beverley Baker, a fellow student on the Design for Costume and Performance course at Arts University Bournemouth.
Emma and Beverley attended the launch of the exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery wearing elegant Regency clothes. Emma sported a long-sleeved red dress and bonnet; Beverley opted for a short-sleeved dress, bonnet and long pink gloves.
They began researching bathing machines in 2024 before designing and building a full-sized replica made of wood. It is hand-painted with Regency designs and sits in front of a painted backdrop showing a stretch of sea and headland. Emma said, “It’s very heavy and took 12 people to lift. I don’t think it could withstand going in the sea – I'd be worried the paint would come off.”
Visitors to the Jane Austen: Down to the Sea exhibition can climb inside the bathing machine and try on bathing suits from the period as well as clothes worn by ‘dippers’, the people who hauled the machines into the water. A second immersive exhibit – a Regency dressing room where visitors can try on elegant clothes as if getting ready for a ball – was also created by students from Arts University Bournemouth. The outlines of feet painted on the dressing room floor are designed to teach visitors how to dance a waltz.
Claire Dixon, executive director of the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery, said the exhibition and program of associated events including lectures, creative writing workshops for school students and a Jane Austen trail, were made possible by more than £94,000 of National Lottery funding.
The museum has also appointed a writer-in-residence (Molly Dunne) for the duration of the exhibition and is working with a local NHS group that uses wild sea swimming to boost their mental health. Austen, who believed in the healing effects of salt water and once wrote “a little sea-bathing would set me up forever,” would surely have approved.
The Jane Austen: Down to the Sea exhibition runs at the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14th September 2025.
18th June 2025
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