With release of Jane Eyre on Friday, September 9th in the UK, the
Peak District is expecting a tourism bonanza.
The film starring starring Michael Fassbender, Mia Wasikowska, Jamie Bell and Dame Judi Dench has been filmed on location around
Haddon Hall and is expected to bring sightseers flocking to the area.
Recent hits which have brought film fans flocking to the area include
Pride & Prejudice,
The Duchess,
The Other Boleyn Girl and
Robin Hood.
Haddon Hall has made a suitable Thornfield Hall before. It was cast as Thornfield by Franco Zeffirelli in 1996 and ten years later in the BBC version. Now it is director Cary Fukunaga’s turn.
This time more than 100 cast and crew transformed the building, with scenes being filmed in the minstrels’ gallery, the state bedroom, the kitchen and even the private apartments.
The cast and crew were billeted at various locations during the four weeks of filming, with many of the stars staying at the nearby Peacock at
Rowsley.
Other locations include the ruins of
Wingfield Manor near
Alfreton, which double as Thornfield after it is ravaged by fire, and White Edge Lodge – a former gamekeeper’s cottage, now a National Trust holiday home on the
Longshaw Estate – which serves as The Moor House.
And the wild romantic landscape that first inspired Charlotte Brontë is allowed to speak for itself.
Stanage Edge, one of the area’s most dramatic natural landmarks, has been chosen to capture Jane Eyre’s profound sense of isolation. The area around her school is filmed near
Edale and the softer countryside where Rochester rides around Thornfield is represented by the lush water meadows below Haddon Hall.
Charlotte Brontë visited
Hathersage in 1845 and is thought to have based much of her novel on landmarks she encountered in the area.
