Maybe Mr. Rochester will buy it
While books by the sisters Brontë are popular, the house where they were born is not. It’s apparently jinxed, and no one really wants to buy it.
The Guardian reports that when the house at 72 Market St. in the Yorkshire village of Thornton went up for auction yesterday, it couldn’t command even the reserve price. Bidding stopped at £180,000 (or about $384,600 Cdn), which is less than commanded by similar properties without Brontë history. Though estate agents had tried to get Brontë fans from the U.S. and Japan interested in the building, no one really bit.
But in spite of nurturing Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë through what their father called “the family’s happiest five years,” the roomy stone-built terrace house lived up to its past – which has seen successive failures as a butcher’s shop, tourist centre, and restaurant.
“It’s a strange thing,” said auctioneer Tony Webber of Eddison’s auctioneers. “When you consider that this family gave the world the likes of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre it’s hard to believe that the home in which they were conceived and born is even still available for private sale.”
The homestead has been purchased by a private investor.
Why didn’t they try Canada? Who wouldn’t by a house from whence they could wander the moors pining after Heathcliffe? Or where there is the possibility of hearing your lover’s voice from clear across the country? (Jane! Jane!) Actually I take it back, those girls were unhinged and Emily especially would be the exact type to haunt a place.