Thornfield Hall

Thornfield Hall is the home of the male romantic lead, Edward Rochester, in the novel "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë. Thornfield Hall is also where a large part of the action takes place.

Brontë uses the depiction of Thornfield in a manner consistent with the gothic tone of the novel as a whole. It is an isolated mansion of unspecified size, with a number of apparently unused rooms, which, during the Bertha Mason section of the plot, become important to the narrative. The Hall's gloomy character also expresses and amplifies the sense of Rochester's depression and malaise before he falls in love with Jane.

It is widely believed that Brontë based Thornfield on Haddon Hall, near Bakewell, Derbyshire, although the evidence for this is unclear. Haddon Hall has, however been used to depict Thornfield on two occasions, in 1996 for Franco Zeffirelli's Jane Eyre and in 2006 for the BBC version directed by Susanna White.