Places
The Setting of Wuthering Heights
The characters whose lives are depicted in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights work and live within the grounds of two country estates—Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.
The entire book may be Emily Brontë’s progress toward Thrushcross Grange, but only if the reading acknowledges the inordinate force of attraction, for her, in the Heights.
We mark this allegiance when we associate the Heights with childhood, the Grange with adult compulsions. The Heights is also the place of soul, the Grange, of body.1
The real cities of Liverpool and London are mentioned alongside fictional places—The Village of Gimmerton, and the magical fairy caves at Penistone Crags.
A map of the country of Wuthering Heightscan be plotted with considerable accuracy; by conforming to the rough triangulations afforded by the leading topographical features, once can measure out a surprisingly detailed graphical sketch of the terrain of the novel.
A. Stuart Daley, “The Moons & Almanacs of Wuthering Heights” (1974)
Much has been written about Emily Jane Bronte’s inspirations for her novel’s setting. I have created this space so you may get your bearings…
Wuthering Heights
Imagination…animal life, folk-wisdom, lore, superstition, ghosts: are at home at the Heights.
We are introduced to Wuthering Heights (The Heights) by Mr. Lockwood, a seasonal tenant staying in the nearby property, Thrushcross Grange (The Grange), via a diary entry he has made after returning from a visit with Heathcliff.
From Volume I: Chapter I…
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. Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large, jutting stones.
The Heights is further described by Lockwood in this chapter; Brontë provides a wonderful description of the exterior and interior of the place, using details from Nature as well as all manner of domestic accoutrements.
…I observed no signs of roasting, boiling, or baking about the huge fire-place; nor any glitter of copper saucepans and tin cullenders on the walls. One end, indeed, reflected splendidly both light and heat from ranks of immense pewter dishes, interspersed with silver jugs and tankards, towering row after row, in a vast oak dresser, to the very roof. The latter had never been underdrawn: its entire anatomy lay bare to an inquiring eye, except where a frame of wood laden with oatcakes, and clusters of legs of beef, mutton, and ham, concealed it. Above the chimney were sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols, and by way of ornament, three gaudily-painted canisters disposed along its ledge. The floor was of smooth, white stone; the chairs, high-backed, primitive structures, painted green, one or two heavy black ones lurking in the shade…
It has been suggested by Brontë researchers that Top Withens inspired its setting and High Sunderland inspired its structure—only Emily Jane knows for certain, I suppose.
Thrushcross Grange
The Grange houses reason, formality, thinner blood.
We are introduced to Thrushcross Grange when, one Sunday afternoon, Heathcliff and Cathy run off to ramble the moors and later that evening, “[plant themselves] on a flower-plot under the drawing room window":
From Volume I: Chapter VI…
Both of us were able to look in by standing on the basement, and clinging to the ledge, and we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers.
Sadly, their visit to the Grange becomes a bit harried when the bulldog is unloosed…
Just as High Sunderland and Top Withens inspired the Heights, Ponden Hall, has been identified as an inspiration for the Lintons’ home, Thrushcross Grange.
In an account by William Davies (published 1896) after a visit to Haworth in 1858, he tells how, after meeting Patrick Brontë (“a dignified gentleman of the old school”), he was taken on a tour of the area: 2
On leaving the house we were taken across the moors to visit a waterfall which was a favourite haunt of the sisters …
We then went on to an old manorial farm called 'Heaton's of Ponden', which we were told was the original model of Wuthering Heights, which indeed corresponded in some measure to the description given in Emily Brontë's romance.
The Brontë’s were frequent visitors to the Ponden Hall library; aspects of the Grange’s interior (especially Edgar Linton’s library) may have been inspired by excursions to the Heaton family home. Ponden more so resembles the architecture of Brontë’s Heights than, Brontë’s Grange.
Gimmerton
The Village of Gimmerton plays an important role in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
…the plainspun name of Gimmerton places on these moors the young ewe past first shearing, the “gimmer.”3
In Volume I: Chapter III Mr. Lockwood finds Seventy Times Seven, and the First of the Seventy-First, “a pious discourse delivered by the Reverend Jabes Branderham, in the Chapel of Gimmerden.”
We are formally introduced to the village when, after a death in the Earnshaw family, the servant Joseph tells Nelly to ‘run to Gimmerton’ for the doctor and the parson.
Gimmerton is the place for gossip. In the village, those in service share tales of the families they serve; it’s where country doctors and midwives, parsons, curates and gravediggers exchange news of locals’ births, marriages, illnesses and deaths.
Penistone Crags
Penistone Crags is magical. To the young moor ramblers of Wuthering Heights, it is a source of mystery and intrigue…
Likely inspired by a rocky South Yorkshire outcrop called Ponden Kirk, Brontë’s fairy cave at Penistone Crags is invoked by the delirious Catherine Earnshaw in Volume I: Chapter XII:
“I see in you, Nelly,” she continued, dreamily, “an aged woman —you have grey hair, and bent shoulders. This bed is the fairy cave under Penistone Crag, and you are gathering elf-bolts!4 to hurt our heifers; pretending, while I am near, that they are only locks of wool. That’s what you'll come to fifty years hence; I know you are not so now. I’m not wandering: you’re mistaken, or else I should believe you really were that withered hag, and I should think I was under Penistone Crag…”
A vein of superstition runs through those stones and young Cathy Linton will also be drawn to the magical fairy cave at Penistone Crags.
As we learn, in Volume II: Chapter IV:
Sometimes, indeed, while surveying the country from her nursery window, she would observe—
“Ellen, how long will it be before I can walk to the top of those hills? I wonder that lies on the other side—is it the sea?”“No, Miss Cathy,” I would answer, “It is hills again just like these.”“And what are those golden rocks like, when you stand under them?” she once asked.The abrupt descent of Penistone Crags particularly attracted her notice, especially when the setting sun shone on it and the topmost heights, and the whole extent of landscape besides lay in shadow.
I explained that they were bare masses of stone, with hardly enough earth in their clefts to nourish a stunted tree.
“And why are they so bright so long after it is evening here?” she pursued.“Because they are a great deal higher up than we are,” replied I, “you could not climb them, they are too high and steep. In winter the frost is always there before it comes to us; and, deep into summer, I have found snow under that black hollow on the north-east side!”
Without spoiling the plot, I hope these brief descriptions of the four main settings of Wuthering Heights help you to envision scenes from the novel and perhaps you’ll take a moment to learn more about the real places which inspired Emily Brontë!
Donoghue, Denis. “Emily Brontë: On the Latitude of Interpretation,” The Interpretation of Narrative: Theory and Practice. ed. Morton W. Bloomfield (Harvard English Studies I) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 131-32; pull quotes regarding the Heights and the Grange are attributed to Donoghue.
Account shared by previous owners of Ponden Hall, Steve Brown and Julie Akhurst
Daley, A. Stuart. “The Moons & Almanacs of Wuthering Heights.” The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. 1974.
‘Elf bolts’ refer to neolithic or Bronze Age arrowheads once collected and believed to have been shot from the sky by magical creatures to inflict harm on cattle and humans.
Throughout history, elf bolts have been treasured (worn as amulets) and used by humans (in magical charms) for their healing properties.