Emerald Fennell’s new adaption of Wuthering Heights is supercharging Emily Brontë’s classic gothic romance with all the spicy, Saltburn-y bits that the novelist neglected to include in her 1847 tale of doomed love.
There’s carriage humping, moorland masturbation and heaving bosoms aplenty as Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) verbally joust and get jiggy in the wilds of Yorkshire. We’re pretty sure that Brontë was just getting round to all that when she hit deadline.
But if, by her own admission, Fennell’s hot and heavy take on Wuthering Heights is her teenage interpretation of its forbidden romance, the filmmaker’s vision does cleave closely to the Yorkshire landscapes evoked by Brontë.
The author was born in West Yorkshire and died there, aged only 30, and her only novel echoes with the howl of the wind on its moors and the splosh of peat bogs. Fennell’s Wuthering Heights used the nearby moors, hills and valleys of – mostly – North Yorkshire, to stand in for the countryside between Cathy’s childhood home and her marital one, the grander pile of Thrushcross Grange.
It’s not quite Brontë’s Haworth but only locals and geologists could spot the difference, and it’s a world closer than the Californian backdrops of the 1939 Laurence Olivier version (albeit, Andrea Arnold’s 2011 version went with North Yorkshire locations too).
Here’s where Wuthering Heights was filmed.
The rock Cathy waits for Heathcliff on is Healaugh Crag, North Yorkshire
When Heathcliff storms away from Wuthering Heights, Cathy is left with plenty of time for yearning – much of it done on a jutting rock formation found on the Reeth Estate, near Richmond. This breathtaking location is the ridge that sits above Wuthering Heights itself in the film.
Wuthering Heights’ exteriors were filmed at Old Gang Smelting Mill, Arkengarthdale
Longer shots of the house in which Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff grow up, under the less than watchful eye of Mr Earnshaw (Martin Clunes), were filmed at Old Gang Mill near the North Yorkshire village of Langthwaite. The collection of buildings was a lead smelting mill in the mid-18th century and is now a grade II listed monument. If you want to visit the site of Cathy and Heathcliff’s own smelting efforts, pack your hiking boots and download this map.
The tree scene was filmed on Booze Moor in the Yorkshire Dales
Overall, there’s more bonking than bantering between the grown-up Cathy and Heathcliff, although some early outdoor flirtation ends with the broody hunk depositing her on the branch of a tree in her finery. The scene was filmed in this north eastern corner of the Yorkshire Dales, along with some dramatic third act galloping by Jacob Elordi’s Georgian fuckboy.
Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights interiors were filmed at Leavesden Studios
Warner Bros.’ giant studio complex outside of London, the home of Harry Potter and Barbie, was used for the film’s opulent interiors and lush sets – the handiwork of production designer Suzie Davies. The salons and bedroom of Thrushcross Grange and the increasingly ruined bedrooms and sculleries of Wuthering Heights were built and filmed here.
The hanging and elopement scenes were filmed at Knole House, Kent
This 500-year-old National Trust property, located in a medieval deer park, has plenty of history behind it, having been owned by an Archbishop of Canterbury and King Henry VIII. It has filming history too: The Beatles filmed their trippy video for Strawberry Fields Forever in Knole Park, and the house’s exterior doubled for the ‘Palace of Whitehall’ in Guy Ritchie’s 2011 Sherlock Holmes sequel.
Wuthering Heights opens with a hanging scene filmed in a Knole courtyard and returns there later in the movie when it doubles as Gretna Green for Heathcliff and Isabella’s (Alison Oliver) elopement.
📍 Here’s how to visit Knole House
West Yorkshire’s Bridestones Moor was used for moorland scenes
Another rugged location that backdrops the on-screen romance can be found a bit closer to Brontë’s West Yorkshire heartland. Bridestones Moor, a community-owned nature reserve, is found just outside the town of Todmodern, a popular hiking spot known for bulbous stones smoothed by millennia exposed to the winds. The landscape here has its own literary heritage: it was immortalised in Ted Hughes’ poem ‘Bridestones’. To celebrate the movie’s release, locals are planning a mass ‘wuther’ on Valentine’s Day to Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’. In case you’re in the area and fancy a howl.
Wuthering Heights is in cinemas worldwide now.
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Read our verdict on Wuthering Heights.
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