The Yorkshire Moors of Wuthering Heights
by Magdalena Zenaida
The moors are temperamental. When my daughter and I arrived at Keighley station, the gateway to Bronte’s Haworth, the air was mild and we sweated underneath our jackets. The stone buildings glistened beneath a slight drizzle and thin clouds hid the sun. It appears serenely pastoral at first glance, with cows and sheep gently munching on the dewy grass. But it is also cut with craggy rocks through which the wind slices unapologetically, reservoirs churning with icy depths. It isn’t a countryside to be patronized, and so it is only fitting that these Yorkshire moors are also known as Bronte country, and are home to the recently opened Ponden Hall.
If you love Wuthering Heights devoutly, the words “bed and breakfast” can inspire fear. Would the broad beamed ceilings and mossy walls be protected, or would they be swallowed up into an upscale conversion? Bronte’s “Thrushcross Grange”, or as it is known in reality, Ponden Hall, is exactly as its hero and heroine would have it.
Our taxi driver crawled around the corner of the dirt road and I saw a walled garden where we were met by Stephen Brown, one-half of the inn’s proprietors.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take your bags,” he said as he stepped out the front door. I ushered my daughter into the long, narrow hallway lined with wellies and jackets. It is still a family home. We entered the sitting room to the right and met the home’s other half- Julie Akhurst, a warm and inviting hostess bearing tea and cookies.
The home was deeply and utterly as much the Bronte experience as it ever had been. The large beams stretch across the ceiling, the hearth spreads out commanding the room, and the fragile windowpanes traced along the windows. A long broad table that is as much a centerpiece to the room as the hearth, both inviting you to sit, stay, and join, in that room.
We were upgraded you to the Heaton Room, the first of many kindnesses Our room was as if a home of its own. Two twin beds were at opposite ends of the room while a large four-poster graced the interior wall. Stephen had built a warm fire in the hearth in front of the chairs and sofa, and the ceiling reached up to a height that made the room grander than a suite. It was quiet enough to hear the cows chewing the grass outside our window, and when we went to bed, a slight wind rattled the windows occasionally, but seemed to promise calm.
In the middle of the night, the winds came, creating all of the taps and rattles that vex an old house. The long, broad gusts animated for the ears how they must be sweeping across the land, merely brushing against this house in its path. Though in a cozy four-poster bed nestled in the softest of pillows and blankets, we both slept fitfully. If the sea lulls you to sleep, the wild winds toss your spirit about, raising and twisting it above the earth, toying with your dreams. I read part of my treasured Wuthering Heights quietly, wondering if I was really in the home that inspired Bronte’s Catherine Heathcliff to come to as a haughty and tempestuous bride to Edgar Linton.
Despite the protective comfort of our warm duvets, we eagerly came down for traditional British breakfast. The Akhurst-Brown family invited us to join them at dinner because it would be late for us to take a taxi to the local pub the previous night and Julie proved she is an excellent cook with a delicious squash soup. Julie came in and out of the kitchen juices, fresh eggs, and warm homemade bread. Stephen pulled two large pillows in front of the stone fireplace so my daughter could sprawl out on the stone floors and watch cartoons. Listening to the family move behind us in the daily lives added more warmth to the room, aside from their heated stone floors and their giant Aga stove, than I ever could have imagined. Indeed it felt as if the haunted souls of Wuthering Heights had been set free.
Yet the real roaming of the imaginative spirit isn’t contained within any historic walls as much as it is in the land they call “Bronte Country.” Only a foolish writer would contend to describe the moors better than Emily and her “bleak hilltop of the earth.” It is best to just walk it. It isn’t a very arduous hike to get to Top Withens, the ruins that some historians claim to be Wuthering Heights. Whether it merely lore or not no longer seems to matter when standing at its viewpoint. The ragged horizon of the land provides an understanding why Bronte dreamed up a freedom from “unquiet slumber” for her lovers upon their beloved earth.
The Akhurst-Browns understand the importance of the fabled spirit, and have helped recreate history from fantasy in Ponden Hall. In the Earnshaw room they created a box bed, designed in exact specification to the one described in the novel. On the windowsill sits a large old bible, open as the intrepid narrator was supposed to have left it. But there are so many factual delights as well, as that very window was supposed to inspire the frightening scene in which the ghost of Catherine Heathcliff tries to claw her way back into the home.
I reread part of Wuthering Heights before bed again during my second night. So much of the book continues long after the lovers have been parted and the actual homes, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, become a focus as hope remains alive on the wild and rocky moors; something, quiet, peaceful, and warm enters those haunted grounds. The Akhursts-Browns have created Ponden Hall as a fulfillment of literary destiny- a haunting history within hallowed walls illuminated by new traditions, vibrant and comforting. As it continues evolving Ponden Hall seems even more immortal than ever.
Private Group Haworth, Bolton Abbey and Yorkshire Dales Day Trip from York
If You Go:
♦ Ponden Hall is open year round. Rooms are available from 85 pounds per night. Tour and tea time is available for 10 pound per head, call in advance. Ring: 01535648608 Web: Address: Haworth, BD22 0HR
♦ Keighley Station can be arrived at via National Rail Services from Leeds. Services to Leeds from London’s Kings Cross are available daily.
North Yorkshire Moors and Castle Howard Day Tour From York
About the author:
Magdalena Zenaida has been traveling for about as long as she has been writing. Her children’s book, An Honest Boy, Un Hombre Sincero won the 2014 International Latino Book Award for best first children’s book. She has also written travel pieces for Matador Network, InTravel Magazine, and DeSuMama. www.magdalenazenaida.com
All photos courtesy of Ponden Hall.
Stretching eighty miles from the natural beauty of Solway Firth on the west coast to Newcastle in the east, it was built around 124 AD on the orders of Emperor Hadrian. He decided his Empire needed securing and he gave the order to build a wall across the northern frontier. The Wall took six years to complete and it’s thought to have begun as a rampart of earthwork and turf and then later replaced by local stone.
A splendid view of the Wall is seen at Housesteads in Northumberland at a section between Walltown Crags where it undulates for several miles over Whin Still ridge. I loved to ramble on top of the Wall itself where it is eight to ten feet wide and over ten feet high. I would stand alone on one of the Wall’s highest vantage points and look down on some of the most spectacular scenery in England, and immerse myself with thoughts of Roman legions patrolling where my own feet were firmly planted. I could envision them toiling to pull earth, cut turf, and lay stones, hewed, hacked and sawed and placed one by one to strengthen and form this massive barrier their Emperor had ordered.
When I walked I could envision the Roman soldiers marching to protect this well fortified defence. Forts were built every five miles and small settlements for housing sprang up, well equipped to provide shelter and storage. In this wild outpost of the Roman Empire, amidst the clamour of every tongue and the practice of every cult, the legions gathered together for training, sometimes to meet British tribes on the other side in friendly chatter or more often in deadly strife.
Few facilities existed then and I continued my trudge over undulating hills, past a tiny wood and down a small valley, dotted with grass chewing sheep with the occasional osprey swooping down to grab an unsuspecting field mouse, to the hamlet of Once Brewed where The Twice Brewed Inn served good hearty northern fare. Feet sore, body aching, a hot home cooked meal washed down with a local light ale, and I was in my heaven on earth and I have never found anywhere better. Forgotten was children’s writer Beatrix Potter’s Cumbrian house, Hill Top, where she created her characters Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle Duck. It would be seen another day. William Wordsworth, inspired by the same lakes and mountains, could also be remembered another time, and Dove Cottage on Lake Grasmere, where he lived for over fifty years, could be re-visited. But, during my allotted time with Hadrian and his Wall, I had deliberately stayed remote with my thoughts midst Nature’s grandeur and Rome’s remnants from empire building, aware that, just around a corner in a lane in Once Brewed, I had left a car which would transport me down the road back into Yorkshire and family happenings, where tranquility, dreams and contemplation would be put on hold.
The remainder of the city sprawls away behind and up the hills though nowhere is terribly far from the spread of farmland, coast and the wild. Sheep can be spotted grazing upon the hills to the south overlooking the old narrow port of Douglas, at the mouth of the Douglas River, hemmed in by solid rock breakwater walls. Low tide levels are readily earmarked on the sides of the piers where craft lay drunkenly upon the mud flats waiting for the inflow to sober them up.
Despite its relegation to third place tourism and its legacy are far from relics.
Minutely visible in the mirrors is the Edwardian Era Gaiety Theatre; a proud heritage building facing on to the main promenade with the ornate exterior a valid promise of what awaits inside. Opening in 1900, a year short of Queen Victoria’s passing, its rich upholstered seating with upper balconies, side theatre boxes and the expressive faces of cherubs and their statuesque kin holds silent witness to the many scenes on and off stage that have transpired over its many years. We were favoured there with a rousing rendition of Little Shop of Horrors so well presented I was surprised to discover the cast were not professionals. The sense of timelessness about watching a performance in this heritage theatre, where my ancestors had most likely sat as well, was as personal as it was poignant.
On the hills above is the must see Heritage of Man National Museum. Housed in its historic quarters, faced with ornate Celtic artistic adornments, its doors open to a chronological history which comes alive in dioramas, authentic artifacts, interactive displays which encapsulates the national story of the Isle of Man and its long history from prehistory to modern. Step into a sod roofed Celtic great house to hear a grandfather passing on to an enthralled child, a cozy home with common conversation between a Manx wife and Norse husband and displays enlivening images of the heady days of Edwardian era tourism. Gawk, amazed, under the expansive skeleton of a great deer which once roamed the isle.There are the makings of a long afternoon walking these halls.
With that, he presented his infant son, born just a few days earlier.
Ruthin Castle stands on a ridge overlooking the beautiful Vale of Clwyd. It was the castle that gave the town its name, for it’s a corruption of Welsh words meaning ‘red fort’, referring to the sandstone from which it was built. The castle, which Dafydd built in 1277, is in ruins now, destroyed in the reign of Charles II.
During this conflict, another of Dafydd’s strongholds fell. This was at nearby Denbigh. The current stone castle was built after the stronghold fell, as part of Edward’s ‘Iron Ring’ around North Wales. Henry de Lacy was commissioned by the King to build it, and was also granted a Borough Charter to establish the surrounding town of Denbigh … which also took its name from the castle; it’s a corruption of the Welsh for ‘little fort’.
In the 15th Century, the castle was besieged twice, but held out, first, against the rebels of Owain Glyndwr then against the Lancastrians in the War of the Roses.
Ruthin Castle has connections with more modern Princes of Wales too. The ‘Prince of Wales’ suite and ‘Bertie’s Restaurant’ at the hotel are named after Albert Edward (later, of course, King Edward VII) who visited the house frequently in Victorian times … because he was having an affair with Patsy, the owner’s wife!
At first glance, the town of Bletchley, some fifty miles to the north of London, appears to be an unremarkable kind of place. For a long time, as far as the outside world was concerned at least, the town’s main claims to fame were the busy railway junction and the manufacture of bricks.
I eventually opted to walk across the park to the ornamental lake and the manor house beyond and then make my way back. The lake was pretty and peaceful in the autumn sunshine, with a breeze rustling the leaves and rippling the water. It was easy to imagine code-breakers taking a well-earned rest by the water’s edge.
Inside, it is all warm wood panelling, stained glass windows, narrow passageways and chandeliers. Some of the new recruits, used to rather grander places, regarded it as a Victorian monstrosity, while for others it represented the kind of stately home they never thought they would enter. Aside from its code-breaking role, the Bletchley Park operation is emblematic of the social upheaval of the period.
Block B houses the main museum on the site, complete with multiple Enigma machines, the largest such collection in the world. Each branch of the German military had their own version, modified in various ways to increase security. The settings were changed daily, and the addition of extra rotors and a plug board made cracking the Enigma machine a much more difficult proposition. Just thinking about it gave me a headache.
