UK - Derbyshire - Follow The Jane Eyre Trail
Follow Charlotte Bronte's Heroine in this Pretty Derbyshire Village
Feb 28, 2007
Charlotte Bronte is usually associated with the village of Haworth in Yorkshire as this is where most of her novels are set. But possibly her most famous novel, Jane Eyre, was set in the small village of Hathersage in Derbyshire. This is the heart of the Peak District, one of England’s most popular areas for walkers. You can pick up a leaflet in the village that gives directions for a Jane Eyre Walk in and around the area.
England - Derbyshire - Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte visited Hathersage in 1845 to stay with her old school friend Ellen Nussey at Hathersage Rectory, whose brother was the vicar of the village and it was while he was away on his honeymoon that Charlotte arrived to keep her friend company for a few weeks during the summer.
You will probably arrive in Hathersage by car, but Charlotte arrived by stage coach and was met at the George Inn, a stage coach and post 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.
Derbyshire - Haversage Village
The George Inn still stands on the main street, much changed but open for business as usual, and you can use it as a starting point for your exploration of Hathersage/Morton.
The Vicarage is a solid, comfortable-looking house and remains much the same as it was in 1845. Wander around the small churchyard, read the tombstones and listen 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 herald significant changes in Jane's life.
At night the only light on the hill, visible from the Vicarage windows, is from Moorseats (which becomes Moor House in the novel) and is the same light which leads Jane Eyre to the home of the Rivers family. Beneath the kitchen window is where Jane 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,you will walk up a grassy hill where where you can sit for a while looking at Moorseats. Charlotte's visit to the house was in much better circumstances than poor Jayne Eyer'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. You will soon realise 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 both strange and frightening filling your imagination, you will see everything through her eyes.
Jane Eyre meets Mr. Rochester
Further 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, a demented women named Agnes Ashurst, was kept locked in an upper room where the walls were padded. She eventually died in a fire - the similarity with the unfortunate Mrs. Rochester is unmistakable.
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. She noted 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: candle-light 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.
Derbyshire - Jane Eyre Trail - North Lees Hall
The Hall 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 back-ground of a rookery .." It stands alone and a narrow lane leads down to the village.
Derbyshire - Jane Eyre Trail - Brookfield Manor
On the way back down to the village you will pass 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 at Morton.
When Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel 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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