Morton

Abstract

The village in which Jane Eyre took refuge after her flight from Thornfield and Mr.Rochester has been identified with the village of Hathersage in the vale of Derwent, Derbyshire. The village is grandly situated on the verge of the Yorkshire moors, the county boundary being little more than two miles to the north-east. In the novel the place is but slightly disguised. Its distance from “S——” (Sheffield) is given incidentally as twenty miles (p. 444), being in reality ten miles, but in no other respect, except in name, is any variation from the model to be detected. The village is of stone, in general aspect not unlike the typical villages of that part of the West Riding in which Charlotte Brontë herself lived. The men of the village are still, as they were in the novel, engaged in the manufacture of needles. “The church of Hathersage, dedicated to St. Michael, is not only one of the most picturesquely situated churches of Derbyshire, but is also one of the best examples of ecclesiastical architecture which the county possesses. … Its general design and most of its features connect the present church with the first half of the fourteenth century, when the Decorated style prevailed.” (Dr. J. Charles Cox, Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire, vol. ii., p. 229.)