High Sunderland Hall

It has long been held that High Sunderland Hall was Emily Brontë’s main model for the external features of Wuthering Heights while Top Withens was the actual location for the house. In 1904 William Sharp in his book “Literary Geography” said. The 1818 drawing below would have appeared very similar to the building that she viewed. Later images show the house in some disrepair. The building was noted for its elaborate and grotesque carvings and Brontë's description of Heathcliff's wild moorland home has unmistakable echoes of the old house. In Chapter I, Brontë writes: The photos below show the resemblance of High Sunderland to Emily’s above description. Photo 1 is the front gate of the house…

High Sunderland Hall was inhabited by the eponymous Sunderland Family. The name deriving from 'asunder land' meaning land on the edge, or land set apart. The Sunderland family have been resident in West Yorkshire since around the 13th century, with a grand wooden house recorded on the site of High Sunderland Hall from at least 1274, before it was clad in stone to form the Hall familiar to Brontë. The Sunderland family were associated, through the marriage of his sister Elizabeth Langdale, to Marmaduke Langdale, 1st Baron Langdale of Holme. During the English Civil War, the Sunderlands' along with the Langdales' fought for the Royalist cause, with suspicious purchases of Catholic property,…