Moors and Mansions: ‘Jane Eyre’ Country

It was one of those strange coincidences that couldn’t have been planned for all the tea in China. I had driven north from London to the Derbyshire Peak District to meet a friend in the village of Edale, the beginning of the Pennine Way long-distance path. Not that we were planning to hike all 250 miles of it, you understand. Just a bit of weekend pottering around the best bits.

I was early, and hungry, so I stopped at a pub, sat at a table, ordered, took out my copy of “Jane Eyre” and settled in for a quiet read from the classic story about the plain governess who falls in love with her handsome, brooding employer.

No such luck. No sooner had I taken a bite of my sandwich and read half a dozen lines when a voice boomed over my shoulder, “Great story, isn’t it?” I groaned and tried to think of something to say that would make the voice go away. But it wasn’t to be. A hairy hand, clutching a pint of Guinness, entered my peripheral vision, followed by a huge body wrapped in a brown raincoat, topped with a checked tweed cap. The body sat in front of me. “Mind if I join you?” He didn’t wait for a reply and continued. “I read that when I was a boy. I live in Hathersage, you know.”

I’ve heard some lines but that was a new one. When I expressed my ignorance of Hathersage, he looked at me as if I’d said I’d never been to Europe! “You’re reading ‘Jane Eyre’ and you’ve never heard of Hathersage!” He proceeded to tell all, and that’s how my friend and I ended up in May following in the steps of Jane Eyre’s creator, Charlotte Bronte, in and around a quiet village instead of walking the wind-blown path of the Pennine Way.

I’d long been a Charlotte Bronte fan but always associated her with the village of Haworth in Yorkshire, where she grew up, where she lived and where most of her novels were set. The Derbyshire connection was news to me.

Of course, the Peak District is a national park, one of the best areas in England for walking, hiking and climbing. The fact that director Franco Zeffirelli’s lavish movie production of “Jane Eyre,” starring William Hurt as Mr. Rochester, had recently been released in the U.S. also peaked our interest. (It’s about to be released on video.)

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Charlotte arrived in Hathersage, about 15 miles southwest of the South Yorkshire town of Sheffield, a long time before we did. It was 1846, the same year she and her sisters, Emily and Anne, published a joint volume of poems under the masculine pen names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Charlotte came to visit her old school friend Ellen Nussey at Hathersage Rectory. Ellen’s brother was vicar of the parrish of Hathersage, and it was while he was away on his honeymoon that Charlotte arrived to keep Ellen company for a few weeks during the summer. (His name can be seen on the list of vicars at the back of the church by the vicarage.)

He returned before Charlotte was to leave for her home in Haworth, and one of his first duties was to conduct the burial of a Thomas Eyre. The Eyres were an old and established family in Derbyshire, and in the Church of St. Michael Charlotte would have seen the Eyre brasses. Such brass depictions of the deceased often were set into the floors or walls of churches of that time as memorials. In the case of the Eyres, the brasses were of four couples with their children, dating from 1459. Eyre was a name that stuck in Charlotte’s mind.

We arrived by car at the tranquil village of Hathersage, and found a B&B.; Charlotte arrived by stagecoach and was met at the George Inn, a stagecoach and postal stop kept by the landlord, Mr. James Morton. Charlotte used his name for the village in the novel where Jane Eyre, starving, exhausted and penniless, begs for a piece of bread in exchange for a pair of gloves. Refused help, she follows a distant light across the moors and arrives at Moor House where she is taken in by the Rev. St. John Rivers.

The George Inn still stands on the main street, much changed but open for business as usual, and we used it as a starting point for our exploration of Hathersage/Morton.

Pretending we had just alighted from the stagecoach from London, we left the snorting horses behind and walked up by the side of The George, across the field and through the gate into St. Michael’s Churchyard. The vicarage, or rectory, where Charlotte stayed is on the left; here she helped her friend Ellen prepare for the return of the vicar and his bride. Ellen wanted Charlotte to help her in the “assembling of furniture, the decoration of rooms and the choosing of servants,” as Charlotte wrote in a letter to a friend.

The vicarage is a solid, comfortable-looking house and remains much the same as it was in 1845. We wandered around the small churchyard, reading the tombstones and listening to the church bell chiming every quarter of an hour. Charlotte would have heard these same bells and, in the novel, the chiming of church bells heralds significant changes in Jane’s life.

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At night, the only light on the hill visible from the vicarage windows is from the manor house called Moorseats (Moor House in the novel), the same light that leads Jane to the home of the Rivers family. Beneath the kitchen window at Moorseats is where she is said to have slumped from exhaustion and where St. John Rivers found her weeping and wringing her hands.

Whereas Jane struggled across the moors during the night to eventually arrive exhausted at Moor House, we walked from the vicarage in warm sunshine up a grassy hill, where we sat for a while looking at Moorseats. Charlotte’s visit to the house was in much better circumstances than poor Jane Eyre’s. A Miss Hodgkinson, who lived at Moorseats for 61 years, wrote in 1978 that the grandparents of the previous owner told her that Charlotte Bronte and Ellen Nussey came to Moorseats for tea, “and Miss Bronte was very charmed with the house.”

*

All around here the countryside is exactly as Jane describes it: “. . . the hills, sweet with scent of heath and rush . . . soft turf, mossy fine and emerald green. . . . “ The fictional visit of Jane Eyre to the Peak District lasted a year. Charlotte was here for just three weeks, but her memories of the area were strong and vivid and she described in minute detail the landscape around her. We were here only three days but soon realized how accurate her descriptions were.

Don’t go to Hathersage without having thoroughly acquainted yourself with “Jane Eyre.” When you’ve stopped crying, and with Jane’s descriptions of the countryside and her encounters with people often strange and usually suspicious of strangers filling your imagination, you will see everything through her eyes.

Farther up the hill from Moorseats is North Lees Hall, which emerges in the novel as Thornfield Hall, where Jane was to encounter the grim, sardonic Mr. Rochester and to learn his dark secret--his mad wife, confined in an upstairs room. The first mistress of North Lees, as local books document, was a demented women named Agnes Ashurst, who was kept locked in an upper room where the walls were padded. She eventually died in a fire--the similarity with Mrs. Rochester is unmistakable.

In the novel, Jane Eyre’s first sight of Thornfield Hall was from the window of a “one horse conveyance” that had collected her from the village after her long journey from Lowood, the orphanage where she had spent so many years. (Charlotte Bronte’s mother died in 1821 and a few years later all the girls but Anne, the youngest, were sent to board at the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, almost certainly the inspiration for Lowood.)

As she leaves Lowood in the book, Jane notes that “the roads were heavy, the night misty” and that the gates clashed behind them as the coach passed through. “We now slowly ascended a drive, and came upon the long front of a house: candlelight gleamed from one curtained bow-window; all the rest were dark.” There is a sense of apprehension, of wondering what is in store for her.

*

We saw North Lees Hall in the bright light of a spring day. Lambs climbed over the stone walls and frolicked in the driveway. The house is turreted, its side buildings topped by very tall chimneys. Jane describes it as being “three stories high . . . battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery. . . .” The house stands alone with a narrow lane leading down to the village of Hathersage.

As we leaned on the stone wall that surrounds the house, thinking of all that took place in its fictitious counterpart and wondering what went on in there today, a tall figure strode up the lane toward us. A caped and booted Mr. Rochester? No, just an amiable hiker with his jacket slung across his shoulders. Such is the unchanging presence of these beautiful Derbyshire hills that it’s difficult to remain in the 20th century.

On the way back down to the village we passed Brookfield Manor, a huge ivy-covered mansion, its turrets and chimneys reaching into the sky. This is Vale Hall in the novel, where lived Mr. Oliver, the proprietor of the needle factory and the only rich man in the parish. It was he who rescued Jane from penury by offering her the position of teacher in the village school.

Meanwhile, back at the George Inn, the locals are all talking about “the movie,” probably Hathersage’s biggest moment since, 40 years after publication of “Jane Eyre,” the village was discovered to be the prototype for Morton.

Zeffirelli decided against using North Lees Hall as the location for “Thornfield.” Instead he chose Haddon Hall (pictured on L1), about 12 miles south of Hathersage. It has a reputation for being the most romantic house in England. More imposing and dramatic than North Lees Hall, it is open to the public and worth the detour.

Next year, will be the 150th anniversary of Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel. When it first appeared it drew mixed response. One reviewer wrote: “What a strange little book! Imagine a novel with a little swarthy governess for a heroine, and a middle-aged man for a hero.”

Just shows how much he knew.

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GUIDEBOOK: Dawdling in Derbyshire

Getting there: There is connecting service only to Manchester, England, on American, Delta, Continental and British Air; round-trip fares start at about $695, including tax.

Getting around: There’s easy access by road to Hathersage. Bus service daily from London; the trip takes about 3 1/2 hours.

There’s rail service from London to Manchester (2 1/2 hours) and connecting service between Manchester and Hathersage.

Where to stay: The Millstone Inn, Sheffield Road, Hathersage, S30 1DH; telephone from the U.S. 011-44-1433-650258, fax 011-44-1433-651664. B&B; price per person, about $32-$50.

Lane End Farm, Abney, Hathersage, Via Sheffield, S30 1AA; tel. 011-44-1433-650371, fax 011-44-1433-650371. A working sheep farm off the beaten track. B&B; price per person, about $28-$42.

The Old Vicarage, Church Bank, Hathersage, S30 1AB; tel. 011-44-1433-651099, fax 011-44-1433-651099. The vicarage where Charlotte Bronte stayed in 1845. B&B; price per person, about $28-$38.

For more information: The Tourist Information Centre, The Pavilion, Matlock Bath, DE4 3NR; tel. 011-44-1629-55082, fax 011-44-1629-56304. Or, the Tourist Office, Town Hall, Matlock, Derbyshire, DE4 3NN, UK.

Or, British Tourist Authority, 551 Fifth Ave., Suite 701, New York 10176-0799; tel. (800) 462-2748 or (212) 986-2200, fax (212) 986-1188.

--C.S.