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The Moors
Quotations about the Geography of the MoorsChapter 10They sat together in a window [of Thrushcross Grange] whose lattice lay back against the wall, and displayed, beyond the garden trees, and the wild green park, the valley of Gimmerton, with a long line of mist winding nearly to its top (for very soon after you pass the chapel, as you may have noticed, the sough that runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen). Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour; but our old house was invisible; it rather dips down on the other side. Chapter 11One time I passed the old gate, going out of my way, on a journey to Gimmerton [from Thrushcross Grange]. ..I came to a stone where the highway branches off on to the moor at your left hand; a rough sand-pillar, with the letters W. H. cut on its north side, on the east, G., and on the south-west, T. G. It serves as a guide-post to the Grange, the Heights, and village. Chapter 12There was no moon, and everything beneath lay in misty darkness: not
a light gleamed from any house, far or near all had been extinguished
long ago: and those at Wuthering Heights were never visible [from Thrushcross
Grange]—still she asserted she caught their shining. Chapter 15Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At Wuthering Heights it always sounded on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of steady rain. Chapter 17...I bounded, leaped, and flew down the steep road [from Wuthering Heights]; then, quitting its windings, shot direct across the moor, rolling over banks, and wading through marshes: precipitating myself, in fact, towards the beacon-light of the Grange. Chapter 18'And what are those golden rocks like when you stand under them?' she
once asked. Chapter 18It struck me directly she must have started for Penistone Crags...I walked as if for a wager, mile after mile, till a turn brought me in view of the Heights; but no Catherine could I detect, far or near. The Crags lie about a mile and a half beyond Mr. Heathcliff's place, and that is four from the Grange, so I began to fear night would fall ere I could reach them. 'And what if she should have slipped in clambering among them,' I reflected, 'and been killed, or broken some of her bones? Chapter 20'Is Wuthering Heights as pleasant a place as Thrushcross Grange?' he
inquired, turning to take a last glance into the valley, whence a light
mist mounted and formed a fleecy cloud on the skirts of the blue. 
Photographs are of Wycoller Valley, near Colne, west of Haworth, and the area around Top Withens. |
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The
moorland that Emily Brontë describes is
a combination of areas that she knew such as the moor around Haworth
where she spent most of her life, the Shibden valley where she worked,
and the countryside near Cowan Bridge where she lived briefly as a
child. But it seems likely that Haworth was the intended position for
Wuthering Heights and the Gimmerton valley. In chapter 4, Mr Earnshaw
walks sixty miles to Liverpool from the Heights; according to my route
map, the distance by road from Haworth to Liverpool is 63 miles.
