Sandlebridge and Elizabeth Gaskell

 

Sandlebridge Farm, also known as Colthurst House, was owned by the Holland family, one of whom, Samuel Holland, was the grandfather of the novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell.
She spent some of her childhood at Sandlebridge and the farm features in her novels, Cranford and Cousin Phillis.

A letter written by Gaskell to a family member in 1836, whilst staying at Sandlebridge, also paints an incredibly vivid picture, as she invites the recipient to imagine the place she is sitting as she composes the note:
 

 “My dearest Lizzy,
 I wish I could paint my present situation to you. Fancy me sitting in an old fashioned parlour, ‘doors & windows opened wide’, with casement window opening into a sunny court all filled with flowers which scent the air with their fragrance – in the very depth of the country – 5 miles from the least approach to a town – the song of birds, the hum of insects the lowing of cattle the only sounds – and such pretty fields & woods all round. .. I do so wish you were here to revel in flowers, & such through country We are up with the birds, and sitting out on the old flag steps in the very middle of fragrance, far from the busy hum of men, but not far from the busy hum of bees…
There are chickens, and little childish pigs, and cows and calves and horses, and baby horses and fish in the pond and ducks in the lane, and the mill and the smithy, and sheep and baby sheep and flowers …
I sat in a shady corner of a field gay with bright spring flowers -daisies, primroses, wild anenomes and the lesser celandine, and with lambs all around me, and the air so full of sweet sounds…”  

Taken from The Letters of Mrs Gaskell, Manchester University Press, 1997, Letter 4, 12 May 1836 More on: warfordhistory