In the footsteps of Jane Eyre

The Telegraph has a couple of articles on the filming locations of the new Jane Eyre. The first introduces us to the owner of Haddon Hall as well as to the supposed originals that Charlotte Brontë might have had in mind when writing the novel.

Lord Edward Manners comments on the fire scene... but with a twist:

It is fair to say that Lord Edward Manners of Haddon was a tad anxious as he watched a firestorm roaring through his stately home in Derbyshire. He was hardly reassured by the local fire brigade standing idly by and enjoying the spectacle, and when a screaming madwoman hurled herself from the north-west tower at the height of the inferno it was the stuff of nightmares.

Happily at this point the director called "cut", special-effects people doused the flames, and Haddon Hall emerged unscathed.

It was all a trick of the film-maker's art, a climactic scene in Jane Eyre, BBC1's new four-part drama, which begins tomorrow, but it was sufficiently realistic to elicit more than a hundred calls to the fire brigade in 10 minutes from alarmed motorists on the nearby A6. "It was impressive," Lord Edward recalls with commendable sangfroid. "I was very glad they didn't have to shoot the scene again."

The article now describes the settings of the adaptation as compared with the possible originals that Charlotte had on mind:

Haddon was the principal setting for the latest BBC adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's best-known novel, but the scenes that fired the author's imagination lie a few miles away in the hamlet of Hathersage, where she spent three weeks in 1845 as the guest of a former school-friend.

"I turned in the direction of the sound, and there amongst the romantic hills... I saw a hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture fields, and corn fields, and woods, and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varying shades of green."

Thus did Jane Eyre describe her first view of Hathersage, as seen by her creator, and it is more or less how it looks today. The sound she heard was the deep, resonant tone of the bell of St Michael and All Angels Church, which still rings out over a bucolic scene in the valley of the River Derwent. (...)

Fact and fiction become easily entangled in this confused landscape of sloping green fields nestling among hard-edged ramparts of wild, gritstone moors. The vales are pretty, but the eyes are drawn upwards to flat, linear uplands known as "edges", etched against big skies.

The Brontë trail from the churchyard leads towards them, via scenes familiar to readers of Jane Eyre. A lane climbs through woodland to the view of Hathersage described in the novel, with the hexagonal spire of St Michael's Church rising above woods and pastures and a stream glittering elusively among them.

A footpath then passes a large house called Moorseats, standing alone on the hillside. This is generally supposed to be Moor House, to which an exhausted Jane was drawn from the moors like a moth to a flame by a light burning in a window. Eventually we reach North Lees Hall, an Elizabethan manor house that Brontë visited and that served as the inspiration for Thornfield Hall, the home of Edward Rochester. (...)

BBC producers adjudged North Lees Hall too small for their drama, so they decamped Jane's lover to Haddon Hall near Bakewell. Having been raised on a literary diet of Boys' Own Adventure stories, I recognised it immediately as the stately home of my favourite Knight of the Round Table.

This is what the strongholds of romantic heroes ought to look like. A grand baronial pile replete with towers and turrets on raised ground above the River Wye, with sweeping lawns ideal for knightly jousting - and romantic encounters between Jane Eyre and Rochester.

Abandoned for two centuries, it is being restored by its present owner, Lord Edward, younger brother of the 11th Duke of Rutland. "This place does inspire people because it is so original," he says. "The historic atmosphere is here. It's a sense of time. You feel as if you are in a totally different world somehow."

It was briefly transformed into the world of Brontë when her star-crossed lovers met in the great banqueting hall, and Rochester's mad wife threw herself (on to a giant airbag) from the north-west tower. (...)

A few miles to the south, the landscape changes from gritstone moorland to limestone dales. The hard "edges" disappear, and country lanes wind among dry-stone walls. This is where the BBC decided to have Rochester fall for Jane - literally, off his horse, in their first encounter. The scene was filmed on a grassy bank of the River Dove, which meanders through one of the loveliest dales in England. It is called, unsurprisingly, Dovedale, and a well-trodden footpath follows the river for three miles to the hamlet of Milldale, where Polly's Cottage take-away does a fine trade in pasties and sandwiches.

The second article is devoted to exploring the filming locations - what was shot where and whether it's open to the public.

Haddon Hall: In the series, Jane and Rochester meet in the great banqueting hall, and their ill-fated wedding ceremony takes place in the chapel.

North Lees Hall: A tower house on the outskirts of Hathersage, this is the home of Rochester in the novel.

Keddleston Hall: For the series, its Caesar's Hall was transformed into a Caribbean setting for a dinner, at which Rochester meets his future wife, Bertha.

Ilam Park: It is portrayed in the series as Jane's school, Lowood House, with a night scene in the cloisters involving a spectral figure with a candle, and a burial scene in the churchyard.

Sudbury Hall: The Queen's Room was used as young Jane's bedroom in her aunt's house, in which she had nightmares.

Bolsover Castle: Scenes from Jane's schooldays were filmed in the stable block and the cellar.

Red House Stables: Three of the carriages from this museum were used in the
series and are also available for private hire.

Very interesting for a possible Jane Eyre 200 route :)

Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, Jane_Eyre, In_the_News