North Lees Hall open weekend

It proved to be quite a trek – with my sat-nav sending me down some pretty tough (and incorrect) tracks – but eventually we found the historic North Lees Hall near Hathersage – and it proved to be well worth the effort.

The hall opened it’s doors to the public over last weekend – to mark the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Bronte’s birth.

Born in April 1816, Charlotte Bronte is perhaps best known for her novel Jane Eyre. North Lees Hall is thought to have been the inspiration for Bronte’s Thornfield Hall – thorn being an anagram of north  – and lees being Anglo Saxon for field.

Charlotte Bronte is known to have paid several visits to North Lees Hall while staying with a friend in Hathersage and describes the building’s battlemented façade, the view from the roof and the Apostles Cabinet – a unique piece of furniture belonging to the Eyre family, which Charlotte later purchased and moved to her family home in Haworth, Yorkshire, where it can still be seen.

The Eyres were a local family who lived at North Lees for two generations during the 15th century and took up the tenancy again in 1750 and lived there until 1882.

The open weekend was organised by the Peak District National Park who own and manage North Lees Hall as part of the Stanage-North Lees estate.

The Elizabethan tower house dating back to the 1590s, has three principal rooms with Elizabethan features – linked by the most unusual elm spiral staircase I’ve ever seen.

More information is at www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/stanage-northlees