Bronte Country is best described by Emily Bronte in her novel Wuthering Heights:
'Wuthering' being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive
of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy
weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at
all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing
over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at
the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching
their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun.
It is generally accepted (although no factual evidence exists) that Top Withens is Heathcliff's moortop home in Wuthering Heights.
The moorland the Brontes knew best are beyond the Bronte Parsonage heading west, places such as The
Bronte waterfalls and Ponden
Kirk are associated with the Brontes. You can discover more about walking in Bronte Country by visiting the Walks pages here...
Bronte Country is rooted in Haworth, other places of interest are Wycoller (Ferndean - Jane Eyre), Thornton Parsonage known as the Bronte Birthplace and Scarborough where Anne Bronte died. She was the only Bronte not to be buried at Haworth
Parish Church, in the family vault next to The
Bronte Memorial Chapel.
On 22 May 1850 Charlotte Bronte wrote about her dead sister Emily Bronte:
For my part I am free to walk on the moors - but when I go
out there alone - everything reminds me of the times when others
were with me and then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless,
solitary, saddening - My sister Emily had a particular love for
them , and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern,
not a young bilberry leaf not a fluttering lark or linnet but
reminds me of her.
