DEVOTED fans of TV series Sanditon have splashed out more than £7,000 to host a two-day celebration of the costume drama.

Cast and crew of the acclaimed adaptation of Jane Austen's final unfinished novel are expected to join viewers at the GLive Guildford Entertainment Centre in Surrey in June.

The event is due to be hosted by Caroline Jane Knight, the fifth great niece of Jane Austen.

The incomplete manuscript, set during the Regency era, follows Charlotte Heywood, played by Rose Williams in the show, as a young naive heroine navigating the new seaside resort of Sanditon.

The original eight-episode series was shown on ITV in 2019.

But fans were left feeling like the story was incomplete and began a campaign after finding out ITV had cancelled the show's renewal in December 2019.

The Facebook group, Sanditon with a top hat emoji, had more than 29,000 members which had grown since 2019 and kick started the campaign to get the series to complete the three seasons it was initially scheduled for.

A change.org campaign received more than 88,000 signatures and after 20 months of sending letters, cards and art works to Masterpiece, Public Broadcasting Service, Sanditon was able to fundraise enough money to continue the series.

Vasantha Narayanswami, 50, from Ash Vale, Surrey, joined the group when there were just eight members on October 11, 2019.

Two days later, the final episode of season one aired and the eight members were in a Facebook live discussion as they were watching.

She said: “Austen novels always end in a specific way. We were live on the Facebook group as we watched the final episode and we didn't understand what was going on.”

“We had this strategy on with what we had to do to save the show. It was thousands of fans all around the world doing this.”

The educator in music and finance added that other ways they grabbed people's attention was using Twitter and tweetdeck, now defunct, as a tool to promote their campaign.

They shared #SaveSanditon 24/7 to keep the campaign alive and had cast members like Jack Fox and screenwriter Liam Hooper like and share their tweets.

Simon Beck, a snow artist, was commissioned by The Sanditon Sisterhood, named by Ms Narayanswami, to draw the main characters, Sidney Parker and Charlotte Heywood at Brean, a beach in Somerset that was featured on the show.

More than 100 supporters raised £2,500 to fund this stunt.

Ms Narayanswami added: “In America, producer Randi Mayem Singer and Dr David Perlmutter started to engage with us and said, 'Yeah, we're right behind you."

With the success of the campaign, Ms Narayanswami self published her journal on the campaign, The Sanditon Sisterhood Diaries, in December 2022, dedicating a chapter to each month of the campaign and shared tips on the dos and don’ts of campaigning.

The team of four, funding the Sanditon Appreciation Society event sent out a hundred invites to the production company, Red Planet Pictures, who were part of Sanditon, in hopes that the cast and crew will join the event.

Fans are hoping to see Ben Lloyd-Hughes and Alexander Vlahos join the meet and greet that is happening on the first evening of the two day event.

All additional proceeds will be donated to Jane Austen’s House and the Masterpiece Trust.

Ms Narayanswami added: "A member of the team is creating these awards.

"They're very unique. There are no awards out there like these. They're really unusual."

Additional reporting from SWNS' Sharin Hussain.