Saturday 25th April 2020, 12.15pm (day 3,166)
Amongst the points of interest within walking distance of my house (honest, officer), there is this place, Top Withens, which sits way up on the moors overlooking Haworth, former home of the Brontë sisters. The plaque you can see on the wall here reads:
This farmhouse has been associated with ‘Wuthering Heights’, the Earnshaw home in Emily Brontë’s novel. The buildings, even when complete, bore no resemblance to the house she describes, but the setting may have been in her mind when she wrote of the moorland setting of the Heights. (This plaque has been placed here in response to many inquiries.)
In other words then, here we have a building that vaguely resembles a place in a novel. And that’s all.
But because popular opinion has it that Top Withens is Wuthering Heights, the structure, though abandoned for more than a hundred years, has been preserved as a ruin. Left alone it would surely have collapsed by now but the walls are carefully cut and mortared together, as gone or complete, it would not be worth what it is to the Haworth tourist trade as it is in this half-life state.
Being 42 