Last Weekend we enjoyed a short trip to Derbyshire and after staying at the George Hotel in Hathersage, I can certainly recommend the food, although I did feel at the price it ought to have been top notch! Hathersage itself had a late summer feel about it, but of interest is that the George Hotel, and the village for that matter were a favourite of the great Yorkshire authoress Charlotte Bronte, and her novel Jane Eyre was set in the locale.
The room at the George contained the usual suspects, and amongst the papers dealing with places of local interest was a detailed account of the history of the hotel, plagiarism [purloining and publication] accepted, here is what it said.
The George as it was originally known is believed to have been first built in the 14th or 15th century. At that time it would have been an ale house serving pack horse trains trudging between the quarries of Castleton and the foundaries of Sheffield. They deposited metal wrought in Sheffield to be made into buttons and needles at England’s first needle factory in Hathersage. Traffic between here and Sheffield became such that in the 1770’s a turnpike had to be built and it was around that time that “The George” became an inn.
I must say it seems unlikely to me that it would have been called “The George”, way back in the 14th or 15th centuries, more likely re-named when it became an inn in the 1770’s and picked up the moniker of the then king… George III. The account continued.
The first recorded owner of the George was the Duke of Devonshire, who sold it to one James Eyre in 1839; in 1841 it was acquired by James Morton, who must have developed his hostelry significantly, for a eriter of the day appears to have been the first to refer to it as a ‘Hotel’. Perhaps as a consequence of another writer, the since acclaimed Charlotte Bronte, whilst visiting friends at Hathersage Vicarage became a familiar person at the George. Indeed she was evidently so enchanted by Hathersage that she used it and its characters as models for one of her books, Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte based the name of her heroine Jane on the Eyre family who previously owned the George, and set her story in Hathersage re-naming it Morton after James Morton the George Hotel’s [then current] landlord.
After an excellent breakfast on the Saturday morning we set out to explore some of the countryside, visiting the village of Eyam and viewing the displays in the small memorial building set up to explain the full horror of the plague which visited upon the place in 1665-6, wiping out over 250 inhabitants, many families completely decimated. I recall in my youth that the Miners Arms in Eyam, used to be a favourite “Lock in”, in those days before the breathalyzer!
Anyhow after that we headed for Haddon Hall, [Quote… Simon Jenkins “The most perfect English home to survive from the Middle Ages.”] and thoroughly enjoyed both the fine warm weather and the great medieval hall. By some coincidence there was an interpretation day by “The Tudor Group”, titled In My Lord and Lady’s Chamber. Ruth Goodman of the BBC’s Victorian Farm was demonstrating the clothing methods of the Tudor period, all together an excellent event. One of the reasons for the tour of the hall, was to grab some photographs for a new section on the Parlington Hall web site, as I have decided to expand the site to encompass some buildings and castles I find inspirational, and which also characterise some of the features that might have been at one time part of Parlington. Below is a fine old weathered oak garden gate, in monochrome… all my pictures in the new section are going to be in this style. Click on the picture to visit the new section.
Coincidentally, relating to the first part of this article about the novel by Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Haddon was in 2006 the setting for the BBC adaptation and became Thornfield Hall… which it is due to become again, only this time for a full cinematic version, starting sometime this month.