March 13, 2019

Buying the home that inspired Wuthering Heights may bring you one step closer to 19th cent. gothic realness

by

If reorganizing your bookshelf with the spine-in, or saving your favorite bookshop from closure via GoFundMe campaigns, is not enough to show your true “book nerd”-self, have you ever thought of owning a “literary home”? According to Andrea Smith from Lonely Planet, the home that inspired Wuthering Heights is now on the market!

Ponden Hall, a 17th century property in West Yorkshire, England is listed at 1.62 million dollars (or 1.25 million pounds). As the listing suggests, the property is “sympathetically modernised” with a “plethora of  character features throughout.”

Smith writes that Ponden Hall was indeed the inspiration for the canonical Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte’s gothic romance novel. The Bronte Sisters were frequent visitors of the property in the 19th century. Smith continues:

The current main guest bedroom houses a tiny single-paned window. This is said to be the window that inspired Emily Brontë’s story of Cathy’s ghost in Wuthering Heights, clawing at the glass, desperate to get in to where the novel’s narrator Lockwood was sleeping. The Peat Loft is also believed to be the place in which Anne, Emily and Branwell took shelter in 1824, during a cataclysmic mudslide caused by a thunderstorm after days of rain, when they had been walking on the moor with their servant, Sarah Garrs.

Included in the article are charming photos of the estate. Feel free to peruse right after checking  your bank account.

 

 

Alex Primiani is the associate director of publicity at Melville House.

MobyLives