The four-mile trail from the village of Haworth to Top Withens in West Yorkshire is well trodden; numerous footprints squelched into the boggy ground by those seeking the view said to have inspired the setting for Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. The landscape rolls in desolate waves of brown bracken. A lone tree punctuates the scene. It\u2019s bleakly, hauntingly beautiful.<\/p>\n
With the release of Emerald Fennell\u2019s new film of the Gothic masterpiece starring Margot Robbie<\/a> and Jacob Elordi next week, Haworth and many of the filming locations in the Yorkshire Dales national park, where the book is set, are braced for a slew of visitors.<\/p>\n The local residents, though, seem distinctly unfazed by the attention.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re used to crowds,\u201d shrugs Craig Verity, the landlord at the Kings Arms, a pub at the top of Haworth\u2019s steep cobbled Main Street, just steps from the parsonage where the Bront\u00ebs were raised.<\/p>\n Bront\u00eb country has been milking the connection for decades. On a wall in the Kings Arms, a board promotes a selection of Bridgehouse cask ales named Charlotte, Anne, Emily and Branwell, the latter being the lesser-known Bront\u00eb brother.<\/p>\n In the surrounding streets, there\u2019s the Bront\u00eb Hotel and the Bront\u00eb Bar and Restaurant, as well as \u2013 somewhat tenuously \u2013 Bront\u00eb Balti.<\/p>\n Haworth\u2019s steep cobbled Main Street, just steps from the parsonage where the Bront\u00eb sisters were raised. Photograph: Ian Dagnall Commercial Collection\/Alamy<\/p>\n The Bront\u00eb Parsonage, where the sisters lived, wrote and \u2013 in Emily and Charlotte\u2019s case \u2013 died, is now a museum housing artefacts, personal items and manuscripts, as well as hosting events such as workshops, talks and screenings of adaptations of the books. It draws around 75,000 visitors annually, a number almost sure to rise this year; a screening of 1992\u2019s Wuthering Heights planned for 12 February has already sold out.<\/p>\n Scenes from this version, starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche, were filmed at East Riddlesden Hall, about five miles from Haworth. The exterior of the 17th-century National Trust property also featured in the 2009 mini-series as Wuthering Heights itself, as well as in the now-lost 1920 silent version.<\/p>\n The 1939 Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon film was shot in California and on set in Hollywood.<\/p>\n \u201cWe only know about the use of the property because of a January 1921 article in the Shipley Times and Express,\u201d said Sophie Fawcett, a senior marketing and communications officer with the National Trust.<\/p>\n Coinciding with the release of Fennell\u2019s new adaptation, East Riddlesden Hall will be holding a Lights, Camera, Bront\u00eb exhibition, which will showcase, for instance, the \u201cvast oak dresser\u201d thought to have inspired the one described in the opening pages of the book. It came originally from Ponden Hall \u2013 about an hour\u2019s walk from Haworth and now a bed and breakfast \u2013 to which the sisters were frequent visitors.<\/p>\n One room here features a box bed and window, likely to have inspired the scene in which the ghost of Cathy appears to a terrified Lockwood.<\/p>\n For this new film, the cast stayed at Simonstone Hall, a sumptuous country house hotel in Yorkshire<\/a> Dales. It\u2019s a 20-minute drive from here to Swaledale, where many of the scenes were shot.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were lovely people, and brilliantly undemanding,\u201d said the owner, Jake Dinsdale, noting that Robbie had since been back for a stay with her husband. \u201cAlthough they\u2019d booked out all 20 rooms, our restaurant was still open to the public, and the cast enjoyed being around the firepit to toast s\u2019mores, or sitting down to a roast dinner or afternoon tea.\u201d<\/p>\n Haworth, pictured here, and many of the filming locations in the Yorkshire Dales national park are braced for a slew of visitors. Photograph: grough.co.uk\/Alamy<\/p>\n