The hairs on the back of my neck tingle as I stare at the mourning bracelet once worn by Charlotte Brontë. Its purple-red garnet glimmers from the centre of a band woven with the hair of her sisters, Emily and Anne. Moments before, while touring the other displays of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, I’d eyeballed the sofa where Wuthering Heights author Emily Brontë lost her life to tuberculosis, aged just 30. Museum volunteers around me chat about Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights film adaptation and one tells me some 500 visitors walked through these doors a day after the film’s release – close to double the numbers they received over Valentine’s Day weekend last year.
In 2026, many travellers will be set-jetting across the Yorkshire Dales to see where Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi acted out the latest film’s tempestuous scenes. But after a surge in sales of the original novel, there will be others, like me, who’ll flock to Haworth for a Brontë inspired literary tour, with the Brontë’s parsonage home at its heart. The mourning bracelet that captures my attention inspired the replica Robbie wore to the film’s premiere. The surrounding village and moorlands, meanwhile, make up Brontë Country, the real inspiration for Wuthering Heights.
