London: The Yorkshire moors that inspired
Wuthering Heights have been earmarked for a new housing estate that a Bronte expert says could completely destroy the views made famous by the classic.
The rolling hills outside Bradford, west Yorkshire have been unchanged for centuries and now form the gateway to the Bronte Way, a trail through the rugged landscape where the novelist sisters played as children and later used as motivational walks for their novels.
The walk was revamped only three years ago when author Michael Stewart created the Bronte Stones Walk, a 14 kilometre hike which takes visitors from Thornton, where the Brontes were born, to their famous parsonage at Haworth, now a museum.
Fans of the Bronte sisters have been left furious by plans to build a sprawling council estate over the wild and windswept moors that inspired Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
The rolling hills just outside Bradford, West Yorkshire, have been unchanged for centuries and have been protected Green Belt land under modern planning rules.
But now protesters are demanding a halt to the building of 150 houses on several fields around the village of Thornton.
They form the gateway to the Bronte Way, the rugged Yorkshire landscape where the Bronte sisters played as children and later used as motivational walks for their novels.