The wonders of medieval wall paintings by Carolyn Hughes

Recently, I read a book that I was surprised I hadn't read before, as it was absolutely my kind of book: A Month in the Country, by J L Carr. The central story concerns a young man, Tom Birkin, who, in the aftermath of the First World War – from which he has returned damaged, mentally as well as physically – has been engaged by a church in Yorkshire to uncover a medieval wall painting. The book was written in 1980. It is quite a short book, so a quick read but, for me, a thoroughly enjoyable one. 

The essence of the book is not really the uncovering of the painting, interesting as that is (and more about medieval wall paintings in a moment…). The narrator, Tom, is looking back on that summer of 1920 from the standpoint of his old age. The story explores pain and loss, as experienced by Tom both in the trenches of the First World War and in his failed marriage, but also the joy that can be found in simple pleasures and the bonds of friendship, even if they are temporary or fleeting.

It is a gentle read, but a thoughtful one, and I do recommend it.

The story of A Month in the Country aside, I was originally drawn to the book partly because of Tom’s commission to uncover the medieval wall painting. The painting that Tom uncovers does seem to be of that most popular of subjects, the harrowing of hell, of which more below.

The story is set in the village of “Oxgodsby”, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the area where Carr grew up. There is a real village called Osgodby in the south of the area, but I can’t identify that it has a church, let alone one with wall paintings. However, forty miles or so to the northeast is the little town of Pickering, whose church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul is famous for its collection of medieval wall paintings.

They are thought to date from 1450 but were apparently covered over in the 16th century during the Protestant Reformation. They were discovered accidently in the 19th century but, unfortunately the vicar of the time didn’t like them – well, I suppose they are very “graphic”! He had them covered over again, though he did also arrange for them to be sketched before they were whitewashed over. However, twenty years later, a more enlightened vicar had them once more uncovered, and restored. And what a wonder they are! 

They cover the majority of the nave walls, above the pillared arches that run down either side of the church. They depict scenes from saints’ lives, the seven acts of mercy, the passion and resurrection of Christ, and also that favourite topic, the harrowing of hell.

I had hoped to be able to tell you that I had seen them “in the flesh” for, earlier this month, we went for a short break to Yorkshire, and stayed close to Pickering. I had thought we might be able to visit the church but, sadly, it had not yet opened again to visitors following COVID restrictions. So I have to make do with photographs sourced online…

But even the photographs show how remarkable the paintings are for the vibrancy of their colour and the energy of the images. Of course they were restored in the 19th century, so they haven’t, so to speak, survived in this wonderful condition for nearly six centuries, though one imagines that the colours are indeed as they would have been in the 15th century.

Let me show you four of them. They are all pretty gruesome, intended no doubt both to terrify and teach the pious folk of Pickering…

First, the death of Saint Catherine. I’m not sure which Catherine this is but I think it may be Catherine of Alexandria, a young devotee of Christianity in the 4th century, who was persecuted by the Emperor of Alexandria, Maxentius. She was condemned to death on a spiked breaking wheel, but it shattered at her touch, and so she was then beheaded. She was only 18 years old.

By Helge Klaus Rieder – Own work, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (61217634)

Next, the martyrdom of Saint Edmund, a 9th century East Anglian king who defied the invading Danes and was shot with arrows and then beheaded.

By Helge Klaus Rieder – Own work, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (61453320)

Now, the beheading of John the Baptist, who was beheaded by Herod Antipas in the 1st century, for rebuking Herod for marrying Herodias, his brother’s ex-wife. Mark’s gospel says that Herodias’s daughter danced before her stepfather, who was pleased and offered her a reward. The girl – who was, some say, called Salome – asked her mother for advice on what to ask for, and Herodias told her to demand the head of John the Baptist. Herod was apparently reluctant to kill John, knowing he was a holy man, but nonetheless ordered his death, and his head was delivered to Salome on a plate. In this painting, John’s head appears to be both on the floor and on the plate…

By Helge Klaus Rieder – Own work, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (61217626)

And, finally, the “harrowing of hell”, which refers to the descent of Christ into Hell between his Crucifixion and his Resurrection, when he triumphantly granted salvation to the righteous who had previously died. I assume that, in this painting, Christ is the larger clothed figure on the left giving his blessing to all those poor naked souls being surrounded by the fiery furnace.

By Helge Klaus Rieder – Own work, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (61217627)

Much older than the Pickering paintings are those in a little church very close to where I live, in the tiny village of Corhampton. The subjects of the paintings are considerably less gory than those in Pickering, though saints are still to the fore…

Here is a short extract from a blog post that I wrote in 2018 about the church: 

“Corhampton Church is particularly renowned for its wall paintings. The collapse in 1842 of the east end of the church damaged these remarkable works of medieval art, but they were uncovered in 1968 and restored. There is some uncertainty about the age of paintings: they could be as late as 1225, but it is generally thought that they date from the middle of the 12th century.

Not all the scenes in the paintings can be deciphered. However, the painting at the top of the south wall is said to depict stories from the life of Swithun, Bishop of Winchester in the mid 9th century. One is the miracle of the eggs. Here, Swithun is inspecting a bridge being built over the River Itchen and, in the crowd that has gathered, an old woman is jostled and her eggs fall from her basket. But Swithun puts the broken eggs back together. To the right of this, the painting is thought to relate to the story of a young man who fell into the Itchen after being frightened by two wild women. He was judged to be dead when he was pulled from the river, but his body was laid for three days by Swithun’s tomb and was restored to life. Below these paintings is a border pattern coloured red and green, and below that are swags and a large medallion featuring two doves back to back with their heads turned to face one another. I understand that designs such as these are very rare for this early period. I really recommend a visit to Corhampton to see the paintings in their full glory!”

 

Corhampton Church wall painting © David Hughes

Corhampton Church wall painting © David Hughes

If you’d like to read more about this lovely little church, the whole blog post is here: https://carolynhughesauthor.com/2018/01/01/corhampton-church-a-saxon-gem-in-provincia-meanwarorum/

The gardens of Castle Howard by Fay Bound Alberti

Castle Howard, North Yorkshire  

Over the festive period, my friends and I visited Castle Howard, a stately home in North Yorkshire. I am not a fan of country estates as a rule; I prefer finding out about the lives of the ordinary men and women who made aristocratic life possible. But it was a beautiful day and we were keen for some fresh air and green spaces.

Castle Howard fit the bill. A short drive from York, it is set in a thousand acres of parkland, with statues, lakes, temples and fountains. There are numerous artworks and world-renowned collections held at Castle Howard, though the house was unfortunately closed for the winter.

A view of John Vanbrugh's project for Castle Howard (1725)

Work began on the stately home in 1699, though it took over a century to complete. The architect was Sir John Vanbrugh (c. 1664 -1726), who was also responsible for Blenheim Palace, as well as a number of Restoration comedies (such as The Provoked Wife, 1697). Castle Howard was Vanbrugh's first foray into architecture, and he was assisted by Nicholas Hawksmoor (c. 1661-1736), a pioneer of the English Baroque style. A Baroque building, Castle Howard has two symmetrical wings that project either side of a North-South axis. The characteristic dome was added to the design at a late stage.

Castle Howard as imagined in Brideshead Revisited (Granada TV)

Castle Howard has been the home of the Carlisle branch of the Howard family for over 300 years. It is perhaps best known for its role in Brideshead Revisited (1981). Castle Howard also featured as the Kremlin in The Spy with a Cold Nose (Galton and Simpson, 1966) and - for inside scenes - in the television series Death Comes to Pemberley (2013). 


Castle Howard was opened to the public  in 1952, reflecting a world where stately home upkeep had become impossible for traditional aristocratic families. Many stately homes were demolished or sold off bit by bit, or redesigned as tourist attractions in the post-war era. Castle Howard is now owned by Castle Howard Estate Ltd and run by Nicholas and Victoria Howard. The grounds were excavated by Channel 4's Time Team in 2003, searching for evidence of a local village that had been demolished so that the estate could be landscaped. You can find the episode on YouTube.

The mausoleum 

In addition to the landscaped gardens to the front of the house, the park grounds contain a forested area and two major buildings: the Temple of the Four Winds and the Mausoleum. Built in 1729, the Mausoleum sits on a hill, and is raised on a terrace encircled with a stone wall. It looks rather like an observatory, and is encircled by Doric column and crowned with a dome. The burial vault lies below, and contains sixty three catacombs. The mausoleum was said to have cost over £10,000 when built, and it influenced their fashionable spread. Such a building, announced the English whig Horace Walpole, 'would tempt one to be buried alive'. More recently, the mausoleum and gardens featured in the Artic Monkeys' video Four out of Five. 

Still from the Artic Monkeys' Four out of Five, showing the mausoleum

The Temple of the Four Winds lies at the eastern end of Temple Terrace. It has four doors and four sets of stairs, each of which faces a cardinal point on the compass. The Temple was designed by Vanbrugh in 1724, and influenced by Andrea Palladio's Villa Rotunda in Vicenza, Italy. Originally named The Temple of Diana, it remained unfinished for ten years after Vanbrugh died in 1726. After it had deteriorated in the 1940s, George Howard restored the Temple in 1955. It was used as a place for refreshment and reading, with a cellar beneath that was used by servants.

The Temple of the Four Winds

We sat on the western side of the Temple to enjoy a packed lunch. From there we had views over the Howardian Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty located between the Yorkshire Wolds, the North York Moors National Park and the Vale of York. The Howardian Hills, as you might expect, take their name from the Howard family.

The walk from the Temple to the house is lined by statues; 18 lead figures can be found throughout the gardens as a whole. Aside from Hercules - who has a rear end that would put Kim Kardashian to shame - our  favourite was Meleager, one of the great heroes of Greek mythology. When his father Oeneus forgot to sacrifice to Artemis, the angry goddess sent a huge wild boar to ravage the country. Meleager gathered a band of heroes to hunt the board, and he finally killed it after a long battle. This lead statue is on the Temple Terrace, with an adoring hound at the hero's feet and a slain boar to the side. We didn't find the statue of the large boar that Meleager defeated, though that is also on the estate.

Meleaguer the hunter with hound, and the head of a newly slain boar.

The spectacular Atlas Fountain and pond crowns the gardens. Dating from 1850, it was exhibited at The Great Exhibition prior to installation at Castle Howard. The Fountain was designed by the English architect and artist, William Andrews Nesfield, and the figures carved in Portland stone by the sculptor John Thomas. who also worked on Buckingham Palace. The figures were transported from London by rail for installation at Castle Howard. 

A large bronze globe dominates the fountain, and is supported on the shoulders of Atlas. In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan condemned to hold up the celestial heavens for eternity. The fountain has four recumbent Tritons blowing water through shells over Atlas, as he kneels in the centre. 

The fountain was empty when we visited, but is beautiful when filled, as you can see by this YouTube clip. The pond alone is vast - 27 metres in diameter. The shell and basin carvings were made by local craftsmen, and the water transported from a stream nearby, and brought up to the estate reservoir by steam engine. The fountain was turned on for the first time in October 1853. 

The Atlas Fountain

You can find out more about Castle Howard from its website, where you can also find videos of the house and gardens. It's definitely worth a visit if you're in the area. We will be going back in the summer when the house is open. 

A belated happy new year to you all!

Elmet, King Arthur and me

I had my DNA done (by Living DNA), which neatly matched what I already knew about my ancestry from all the Ancestry.com family trees and my own research. In a nutshell, this is me: 

The Scandinavian/Finnish bit comes from my Swedish-Finnish Great-Grandfather. The rest roughly matches the English/Scottish background of my ancestors. 

What was most interesting to me was the more than a quarter of my DNA that comes from the mysterious part of Yorkshire that was the ancient kingdom of Elmet. 

Only one of my grandparents - my mother's father - was born in England. Although his birthplace was Liverpool, both of his parents came from Almondbury near Huddersfield and his Eastwood/Wilkinson forebears seem to have lived in the Almondbury area ad infinitum. 

Almondbury is now a suburb of Huddersfield, but when my ancestors lived there it was a village. Here are some photos of Almondbury I took yesterday.

I had assumed the Yorkshire part of my genetic makeup would mean I had Anglo-Saxon or Viking DNA, because that's what we now associate with Yorkshire: Viking York (Yorvik) and Anglian Northumberland and Mercia. However, it seems I hail from a much older people, the original Celtic Britons. 

South Yorkshire is sometimes jokingly referred to as "The People's Republic of South Yorkshire". It has form, as many large Chartist meetings were held on hilltops across the South and West Pennine moors, and there were bitter protests during the Thatcher years. They're a bolshie group in that part of the world, and proud of it. Now I understand why that's so and I'm really happy to share their DNA.

To quote my DNA report:

"The formation of South and West Yorkshire as a distinct genetic and cultural region has its roots in perhaps the most mysterious part of Britain’s history. As the Romans withdrew roughly 1500 years ago, the island was undergoing a great cultural and demographic shift. Waves of migration from Northern Europe saw Angles, Saxons, and Jutes setting up vast and powerful kingdoms, both displacing and integrating with the indigenous Britons. In certain areas, this transition happened quickly with little evidence of warfare, but some post-Roman rulers resisted. 

The Kingdom of Elmet held out in England longer than most others, a buffer state in southern Yorkshire surrounded by expansive Anglian kingdoms. Though eventually it fell, remarkable evidence from the first fine scale genetic map of Britain shows that the ancient kingdom’s legacy is still felt today as a unique genetic signature can be found in an area almost perfectly matching its probable geopolitical boundaries." (my emphasis)

Living DNA refers to the portion of Yorkshire in red below as "South Yorkshire".

 

This is not entirely the area currently known as South Yorkshire, rather it lies within the old West Riding.

Basically, a quarter of my DNA comes from the people who made up this ancient kingdom of Elmet, which was an independent Celtic kingdom that existed between about the fifth century and early seventh century AD and was the last stronghold of the Britons to fall to the Anglo-Saxons in the seventh century. 

The boundaries of Elmet appear to have followed a rough line along the River Wharfe in the north-east, incorporating Ilkley to Tadcaster, and the River Don incorporating Doncaster and Sheffield in the south, up the side of the Peak District and taking in Sowerby Bridge Hallifax and Keighley. 

The capital of Elmet seems to have been in or near to what is now Leeds, then Loidis. The name Elmet comes from that of the elm-tree, because it was located in a great forest of elm-trees. 

It was known variously as Elmet, Elmed or Elfed, and the name may refer to its extensive forests of elms. The early chroniclers called it Elmete Saetan or "the dwelling place of the people of Elmete".

The people of Elmet were originally a part of the powerful Celtic tribe of Brigantes. In 155 AD the Brigantes revolted against Roman rule and burned down the Roman fort at Ilkley (Olicana). They were soon defeated.

Apparently the local Celtic British tribes centred around Leeds (Loidis) thought it wiser to be associated with the powerful Romans, who ound it convenient to rule through alliances with local chiefs. They separated from the Brigantes to form themselves into the separate kingdom of Elmet. They then forged an alliance with the Romans.

After the evacuation of the Roman Legions from Britain, around 407-410 AD, Elmet came into prominence as a Christian bulwark against the invading Anglo-Saxon pagans. And there is often an association of Elmet with the origins of Arthurian legends which speak of a warrior who led a band of heroic warriors to spearhead the resistance of Britons against the invading Saxons, Jutes, and others from the north of Europe, sometime in the fifth and sixth centuries AD.

It seems that Elmet had associations with the Welsh Celtic tribes. A two-line Latin inscription on an early Christian burial stone dating from the late fifth or sixth century was unearthed in a field known locally as the Gardd-y-Saint (the Garden of the Saints) near Llanaelhaearn church (about six miles north of Pwllheli) in north-west Wales. 

The  stone has been set into the wall of the church and it reads: 'ALIORTUS ELMETIACO HIC IACET', which means that "Aliortus, the man of Elmet" is buried there. (My husband's mother's maiden name was Allott and his mother came from Yorkshire. Perhaps Aliortus was an ancestor!)

Then came the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. In the sixth century, those Angles who were occupying territory to the east of Elmet (the East Riding) founded the kingdom of Deira, those to the north founded Bernicia, whilst the Angles of Mercia began to take over land to the south and in the Midlands. Elmet became a frontier land, ringed by the invaders.

One of my favourite TV shows in the 1970s was Arthur of the Britons. It now seems that the real Arthur may have been from Elmet.

This view is supported by an Historian, Adrian Grant, who claims that Arthur was the son of Masgwid Gloff, a 5th-Century king who ruled over the kingdom of Elmet. He claims that Arthur was born in around 475AD in Barwick-in-Elmet.

According to Grant, Arthur’s real name was Arthwys ap Masgwid (Arthur son of Masgwid), and he was the son of the king of Elmet, Masgwid Gloff and and his wife, Gwenllian V Bryche.

At the age of 15, says Grant, Arthur was chosen by the chiefs of the 'Hen Ogled' or 'Old North' - the kingdoms of northern England - as their Pendragon, or Commander-in- Chief and fought battles against the Scots, Picts and (probably) Saxons.

For a period Elmet was sufficiently powerful to withstand Anglian pressure, whether from Deira, Bernicia or Mercia. The poet Taliesin  wrote of Guallauc, a ruler of Elmet as "a skilled warrior," beloved of his followers. 

Sadly, Elmet couldn't hold out forever against the expanding Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.  The kingdom's downfall began in 590 when its king, Gwallog, was killed during a war against the Angles of Bernicia. 

Worse was to come for Elmet when in 616, Edwin, the king of Bernicia, merged his kingdom with its southern neighbour, Deira, to form the powerful Anglian kingdom of Northumbria. 

Elmet, the last of the Celtic kingdoms became the target of Edwin, king of Northumbria. His excuse for invasion came when an exiled Northumbrian nobleman named Herric (who had been given sanctuary in Elmet by its king, Ceredig) died of poisoning at the Elmet court. Some think that Hereric was poisoned on Edwin's orders, as an excuse to ipunish Ceredig for taking in Herreric by invading and annexing his country. 

Although the kingdom of Elmet became part of Northumbria in 627, it seems that its population of Britons stayed put. According to a genetic study published in Nature (19 March 2015), the local population of what had been West Yorkshire is genetically distinct from the rest of the population of Yorkshire. 

Later Anglo-Saxon and Viking names survive as Barwick-in-Elmet (berewic is Old English for 'corn farm'), Scholes-in-Elmet (the name is a plural of Old Norse skáli = "temporary shed") and Sherburn in Elmet, as if the locals were determined to maintain the memory of the fallen kingdom. The Angles who took over the area became known as the Elmed Saetna, or Elmet settlers, so the name was well enough established with the invaders to survive its demise as an independent kingdom.

The ancient kingdom of Elmet held a particular fascination for the poet Ted Hughes, probably because he spent his early childhood in Mytholmroyd, near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. He had a great love for the area. 

With the photographer, Faye Godwin, he produced an "episodic autobiography" of the region, in which he examined the disconnection between the lives people live, the places they live and the history that surrounds them. The book was Remains of Elmet, first published in 1979, with an expanded edition, called just Elmet, in 1994. 

Hughes felt that the Anglo-Saxon usurpation of Elmet ("the last independent Celtic kingdom in England") was the first in a series of disasters to befall the area. His poems depict a weather-beaten landscape and people and the vestiges of industrial enterprise, religious custom and ancient tradition. He claimed that only nature now flourishes, as it reclaims the land from those who inhabit it.

Sources:

http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/BritishElmet02.htm]

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/04/king-arthurs-birthplace-found-claims-british-researcher/

http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsBritain/BritainElmet.htm

Top Withens: The 'Real' Wuthering Heights by Katherine Clements

This is the plaque that greets you when you reach Top Withens. Thousands of tourists make the steep climb from Haworth to see the ruins that supposedly inspired Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I feel sorry for the ones that turn up with their expensive Nikons and Thermos flasks, buffeted and muddied, to find that this isn’t the ‘real’ Wuthering Heights at all. Brontë scholars tend to agree that there’s no such thing. So why has the legend become attached to this tumbledown farmhouse on the moors?

The first definite association with Top Withens appears in a nineteenth century edition of the Brontës' work. In 1872 publisher George Smith commissioned an artist to illustrate a new anthology. He wrote to Ellen Nussey, a close friend of Charlotte’s, asking if she know the names and locations of the ‘places so vividly described’ in the sisters’ work. Frustratingly, we have no record of Nussey’s reply but Smith certainly wrote to thank her for her help. When the edition appeared, Wuthering Heights included a drawing of the Sladen valley, with three isolated farmhouses in view: Near, Middle and Top Withens.

I’ve visited several times myself, in different seasons and different weathers, while researching a work in progress that’s set in the area. Depending on which path you take it is possible to find yourself completely alone, with no human habitation in sight and nothing but a vast sky, the call of curlew and the whistle of the ever-present wind to spark the imagination. It feels wild and remote. As poet, Ted Hughes put it:

Moors …

Are a stage for the performance of heaven.

Any audience is incidental.  

Top Withens, March 2015

We have a tendency, these days, to romanticise these moors. The Brontë sisters would not have experienced them as we do, with our waterproofs and wellies, a place to be visited before retreating to the safety of Haworth for a cream tea or a pint in The Black Bull. In the past the moors were seen, rightly, as dangerous places, savage and deadly, the blanket bog a path straight down to Hell.

But Emily Brontë loved the moors. They were a playground and an escape. As an adult she walked them regularly, alone or with her sisters and they feature heavily in her writing. Her fictional interpretation of the landscape has become one of the reasons for our own romantic view, but she would have been well aware of the hardship and danger for the people who lived and worked there.

The first recorded owner of ‘Wythens’ (later to become Withens or Withins) was George Bentley, a clothier who bought the land from Thomas Crawshaye in 1567. Of the Crawshayes and those that came before, we have no knowledge. On his death, George bequeathed his estate to his grandson William and in 1591 the land was divided between William’s three sons, as detailed in his will. Three farmhouses were allocated to the three men: Near, Middle and Top Withens. You can still find the ruins of all three.

The next recorded owner of Top Withens doesn’t appear until 1813; a John Crabtree who, in turn, leased it to Jonas Sunderland. Jonas, his wife Ann and their descendants lived at Top Withens until the end of the nineteenth century. It’s likely the family would have known the Brontë siblings, at least by sight. By the time the house passed to Ann Sharpe (née Sunderland) and her husband, Samuel in 1888, the area had already been dubbed ‘Brontë Country’ (the term first appears in a guidebook of that year).

The Sunderlands at Top Withens

By 1895, Ann Sharpe was dead, leaving Samuel to bring up their young daughter, Mary, alone. It must have proved too hard a life for Samuel – a year later they had moved to a valley farm named Sheep Holes and the house was abandoned.

As far as we know it stayed that way until the early 1920’s when an invalided ex-soldier named Ernest Roddie took up residency. The Yorkshire Evening Post ran a series of articles about him and even sent a reporter to interview the mysterious Ernest, who lived alone with just his dogs and chickens for company. Following his first winter he said:

‘I think Top Withens is the place for me all right. We have some rough weather up here … It’s been fearful cold since Christmas and there are days when the snow’s been so thick I couldn’t get the cart down to Stanbury.’ But, he said ominously, ‘a man can’t be lonely at Wuthering Heights.’

How much of this is poetic license on the part of the journalist we’ll never know, but by 1926, the harsh lifestyle had beaten Ernest too and he moved back down to Haworth, leaving the house to the elements.

Top Withens circa 1930

The crumbling ruins have been a source of scholarly conflict ever since. A grade II listing in the 1950s was revoked in 1991 and clumsy concrete repairs do little to retain any historical authenticity. The Brontë Society famously repudiated the link with Wuthering Heights, as the firmly worded plaque suggests, but Brontë fans still come from all over the world to pay homage.

Emily would have known Top Withens as a working farm inhabited by the Sunderland family. Its situation at the top of the valley on the edge of the windswept moor may bring to mind the setting of the Heights, but the building itself is not the house described in her novel.

Several other houses that Emily would have known have been put forward as prototypes, including Ponden Hall (also mooted as the model for Thrushcross Grange) and High Sunderland Hall, now sadly demolished. Although perhaps too grand for a farmhouse, my money is on the latter. But I expect it’s not that simple. My current project is similarly set on an isolated working farm on the West Yorkshire moors. I’ve used elements from several local houses to create a fictional one. I suspect that's exactly what Emily did too.

High Sunderland Hall

Perhaps the association with Top Withens is just a romantic myth but when you stand by the ruins, look out over the desolate moorland and think of the people that made a life here, it’s hard not to be swept up by the atmosphere. I’ll leave the description to someone who knew it better than I ever will…

"Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr Heathcliff's dwelling. `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."

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.


www.katherineclements.co.uk

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