Historic British Homes Boast Literary Lineage

The Vivat Trust, a British nonprofit preservation trust, has restored and refurbished five properties for visitors with a taste for staying in historical buildings.

Among them are North Lees Hall, an Elizabethan tower house in Hathersage, Derbyshire, 175 miles north of London, in which there are two apartments.

It is believed to have been the inspiration for Thornfield Hall, the home of Rochester in Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre.”

Vivat Trust’s other properties also have literary settings.

The Chantry at Bridport in Dorset, 145 miles west of London, is in the countryside of Thomas Hardy novels, and is thought to have served as a lighthouse and river toll-collection point in Norman England.

The Temple, near Bridgnorth, 140 miles northwest of London, and the Summer House at Eyton-on-Severn, 150 miles northwest of London, are both in Shropshire, the county that inspired A.E. Housman’s volume of poetry “A Shropshire Lad.”

The Temple was originally a teahouse, built in 1782. The Summer House is a rare surviving example of an early Jacobean banqueting house.

Church Brow Cottage in Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria, 250 miles north of London, has links with Wordsworth, and was a three-story late Georgian garden pavilion.

Prices, per property, range from $510 a week in low season to $884 a week in high season.

Vivat Trust Holidays, 61 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5HZ. Telephone (44-171) 930-8030, fax (44-171) 930-2295.