Charlotte Brontë visited Norton Conyers a manor house in North
Yorkshire in 1839. She learned the story of a "mad women" who
was kept in the attic there some 60 years earlier and the idea
for "Mrs. Rochester" was born. According to an article in The
Guardian by Martin Wainwright the similarities between
Thornfield Hall and Norton Conyers are unmistakable. ...until
this month, only Thornfield had a hidden flight of stairs from
near Mr Rochester's grand bedroom to his wife's miserable
prison. "We decided to investigate the tradition" said Sir James
Graham, 64, whose family bought Norton Conyers in 1624. He was
brought up in the house, and remembered tales of the imprisoned
ancestor, secret passages and sections of wooden panelling which
rang hollow when knocked. One of these was on the landing
outside the Peacock Room, the supposed model for Mr Rochester's
quarters, and it was here that the musty flight of steps
uncovered in the attic proved to lead. Sir James and his wife, a
former museum curator, crept down a