Wycoller Hall was a late sixteenth century manor house that was the center of a sizeable estate, but collapsed beyond repair. The structure is located in Wycoller, Lancashire, England. The estate was owned by the Cunliffe family after losing their ancestral home to debtors ("Wycoller Hall"). After passing through many brothers of the family, Henry Owen Cunliffe decided to build a home in hopes of attracting a wife; however, he had many debts upon his passing that he could not pay off leading to the estate being sold ("Wycoller Hall"). The structure continued to survive into the nineteenth century and continued to steadily crumble to pieces. A local conservation group was founded in 1948 to conserve the historic village and was sold nearly thirty years later to the Lancashire County Council.

Critics believe that Wycoller Hall is the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in the novel Jane Eyre ("Ferndean Manor"). The Brontës lived in a nearby village called Haworth; the...

In the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Bertha suffers from a severe mental illness. Mr. Rochester, Bertha’s husband, locked Bertha in the attic and hired someone to look after her when her mental illness became prominent. Although Rochester did take some measures to provide care for Bertha, she needed far more help than what was provided to her. One option could have been for Bertha to live in a mental asylum. In the 1800’s, the care of people with mental illness began to change from believing they needed to be kept in custody, to believing they needed to receive adequate care (Disability in the 19th Century). Due to Mr. Rochester’s status, he traveled to London frequently; around the time of this novel being written, Hanwell Asylum was established and opened in London. This availability makes an asylum a reasonable alternative to locking someone in the attic. At Hanwell, Sir William Charles Ellis was the superintendent upon the asylum’s opening in 1832. He...

Coaching Inns, during the Victorian Era, acted with various means during this time. They primarily acted as a mode for long-distance travel and would usually be spaced out from each other every seven to ten miles in England (“Coaching Inns in Early 19th Century England”). Additionally, they also acted as a means of connecting the Royal Mail, and they also completed other services (“Coaching Inns in Early 19th Century England”). Such services included providing fresh horses to travelers, as well as they acted as a general means of restaurant, hotel, and repair shop (“Coaching Inns in Early 19th Century England”).

By researching such a topic, I can better understand Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: An Autobiography because I am able to better understand the notions of travel presented within the text. Multiple times, it is mentioned how Jane travels to various places for the sake of plot development, and along with this; Rochester Arms is an inn that holds a very...