Top Withins: The derelict Yorkshire farmhouse which is known across the world thanks to Emily Brontë

Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed.

One may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house, and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving aims of the sun”.

The building commonly held to have been thus described is known as Top Withins, a desolate and now roofless Pennine farmhouse on the east-facing slope of Delf Hill almost 1,400ft above sea level and three miles southwest of the Brontë parsonage at Haworth.

Dating from the 16th century, there is a record of an early owner being one Thomas Crawshaye, who lived there with his sister Anne until it was sold in 1567.

According to a local newspaper report in the 1890s, a thunderstorm caused severe damage with parts of the roof being hurled some distance from the property. It was finally abandoned in 1926.

Whether Top Withins was the actual model for remote Wuthering Heights has never been established.

A plaque placed there by the Brontë Society in 1964 states that “the buildings, even when complete, bore no resemblance to the house [Emily] described, but the situation may have been in her mind.”

It has been suggested that the book’s association with Top Withins resulted from mere speculation by a friend of Charlotte Brontë’s 25 years after her sister Emily’s death.