Literary Places by Sarah Baxter

Author:Sarah Baxter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2019-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

It was a landscape Emily Brontë knew well. From 1820, the Brontë family (including Emily’s novelist sisters, Charlotte and Anne) lived in the parsonage at Haworth, a hard-working Pennine village producing worsted yarn and cloth. At the time, industrialisation was rebalancing England, from a mainly rural to a mostly urban society. Haworth – not so far from the powerhouses of Leeds and Manchester – was both: a crowded, polluted centre set high on the moors’ edge, open country just beyond. Emily Brontë would often escape into that hinterland, and it suffused her writing; Charlotte called her ‘a nursling of the moors’. Emily found inspiration in the rocks, crags and waterfalls, and understood nature as both a destructive and soothing force.

The novel’s two main locations, Wuthering Heights (the Earnshaw home) and Thrushcross Grange (home of the well-to-do Lintons), are just 6.5 kilometres (4 miles) apart but distinct in personality – like their fictional owners. The former sits high on the tops, chill and gloomy; the latter nestles in the valley, more civilised and refined.

Wuthering Heights is believed to be based on Top Withens, a long-abandoned 16th-century farmhouse a few miles southwest of Haworth. Its structure doesn’t match Emily’s creation, but its remote, windswept position fits the bill. Walk across the moor from Haworth parsonage – now the Brontë Museum – to reach the exposed stone ruin and it’s easy to think yourself into the pages of a Gothic romance.

Architecturally, a more likely candidate for Wuthering Heights is Ponden Hall, a manorial farmhouse near Haworth, which suits in size and style, if not situation. Actually Ponden is more usually cited as the model for Thrushcross Grange. Built largely in 1634, and extensively rebuilt in 1801 (the year in which the novel begins), Ponden did have a long, tree-lined drive like Thrushcross, but it lacks the grandeur and grounds that Emily describes. However, the Brontës visited regularly, and Emily would read in the extensive library.

Ponden Hall is currently a B&B. Now anyone can book the ‘Earnshaw Room’ to sleep in its 18th-century-style box bed and peep out of the tiny window in the thick stone wall. Though be warned that your dreams might meander the wind-raged moors, and you might hear the ghosts demanding to be let in …

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