Out On The Wily, Windy Moors

I’m staying at The Golden Lion in Settle, on the edge of Yorkshire Dales National Park, and about a 40-minute drive from Haworth, home of the Brontë sisters. From the cosy comfort of my room, it’s difficult to fathom that such bleak yet beautiful countryside lies outside. The sloping ceiling, the woodland-inspired, folkloric wallpaper and the natural colour palette, lifted by touches of deep red - plus the roaring fire downstairs - evoke a fairytale, rather than a story of savage, tumultuous and ultimately destructive passion. 

Yet stepping outside, the wind whips at me instantly, even in the relative shelter of the sandstone village. Settle is surrounded on all sides by the Yorkshire countryside, making it the perfect base for a walking holiday; the couple from The Netherlands I’d met over breakfast were back for their second consecutive year, setting out daily in their battered boots to explore nearby caves and waterfalls.

Walking may be the stuff of wholesome, active holidays now, but in Emily Brontë’s time, it would have been one of the few occupations available to her - and one necessary for her health, in a village where life expectancy hovered around 25. 

Haworth remains largely unchanged since the Brontës’ time, even if some of the buildings now serve purposes other than their original ones. The parsonage in which the literary sisters were raised by their father (their mother died, aged 38) is now a museum, and the post office from which they sent their manuscripts off to London is now a restaurant. Even so, it’s an atmospheric place, with fog shrouding the lower reaches of the steeply cobbled main street in the early afternoon when I arrive at the The King’s Arms, where a selection of beers named Emily, Charlotte, Anne and Branwell (the troubled - and troublesome - Brontë brother) are available. 

Setting out from the back of the parsonage, it’s a blustery four-mile trek to Top Withins, and one that the Brontë sisters must have made countless times. Many others have followed them; the boggy imprints of walking boots along the trail are testament to that. Making my way past the hikers who have stopped for a packed lunch by the bridge at the Brontë Waterfall, the terrain becomes less hospitable; the ground gurgles with the gush of nearby water and my boots are soon slick with peat. On the hill beyond, the blackened shell of Top Withins stands starkly against the grey sky; on reaching it - the final push is a steep one - I read a 1964 plaque, placed by the Brontё Society, which notes that while the building never resembled the house she described, its setting may have stirred Emily’s imagination.

It’s melancholy and desolate - yet also beautiful in its moodiness. It’s not hard to see how this landscape, and its unyieldingness, became a template for a relentless, enduring love. 

As limited as Emily Brontё’s physical world might seem through a modern lens, her emotional world was given free rein through reading. Ponden Hall, over an hour’s walk from Haworth, housed, in the 1800s, one of the largest library collections in the area. The Brontё family were friends with the resident Heatons, and regular visitors - not only exploring worlds beyond their own via books, but also finding inspiration within the reality of the property itself. Now run as a B&B, it’s widely believed that Thrushcross Grange was based upon Ponden Hall; the box bed and single window in one of the bedrooms seem to be what Emily had in mind when she penned her haunting  “let me in at your window” scene - later immortalised by Kate Bush. 

This new adaptation shot many of the film’s scenes in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, including the Old Gang Lead Mines in Swaledale.  Just two kilometers away, Bouldershaw Lane provided the setting for Margot Robbie’s ethereal wedding gown sequence. The cast stayed nearby at the 20-bedroom Simonstone Hall, a gracious country house hotel. 

But whether you explore North Yorkshire’s moors or dales — the latter greener and more agriculturally tended — you can’t fail to marvel at the vastness of the sky and the wildness of the landscape, and to appreciate how a young girl, with little life experience, found in them the raw material for what many consider the greatest love story of all time.

Sarah Rodrigues was hosted by The Golden Lion in Settle, a traditional coaching inn with double rooms from £115 B&B.

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