From a remote Scottish castle to a Canadian paradise, refuge can be found amid nature’s wild beauty, writes Florence Hallett
Big Sky, Montana | Big Sky Sotheby’s International Realty
Heights” is likely to have even the most ardent city dwellers longing for a corner of wilderness to call their own. Starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as ill-fated lovers Heathcliff and Cathy, the story is set on England’s rugged Yorkshire Moors in all their windy and rainswept beauty.
Big skies, starry nights, bracing winds, wild heather—the life-affirming bite of the elements calls for some serious home comforts, says Christa Ackroyd, who three years ago led the campaign to save the Brontës’ Bradford birthplace. “Wuthering Heights style conjures up winter and mist and moors, which means your house has to be comforting all year round—stoves, log fires, battered but much-loved furniture, family photos and trinkets, the very antithesis of minimalism,” she says.
The house from which the novel takes its name is just such a bulwark against the elements. “Wuthering,” explains Brontë, is “a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather.”
Consolation in Brontë’s strange and unsettling novel comes in her detailed descriptions of domestic interiors. Wuthering Heights, she writes, is better suited to a “homely, northern farmer” than the brooding figure of Heathcliff. Inside, light and heat are reflected “from ranks of immense pewter dishes, interspersed with silver jugs and tankards, towering row after row, on a vast oak dresser, to the very roof.”
Shuna, Scotland | United Kingdom Sotheby’s International Realty
Just this sort of kitchen must once have sat at the beating heart of Shuna Castle, the crowning glory of a private island in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, currently for sale for the first time in its history. The 1,110-acre island is nothing short of “breathtaking,” says Alex Collins, of United Kingdom Sotheby’s International Realty.
A working estate and a natural sanctuary for deer, eagles and porpoises, “it has 360-degree views of some beautiful, dramatic scenery,” Collins says. And with eight residential properties, the possibility of redeveloping the remains of the castle, and easy access to the Scottish mainland, Shuna is the perfect setting for an exclusive hotel, retreat or unique private residence.
Bridge Lake, Canada | Sotheby’s International Realty Canada
Nature untouched by human hand is also the rare promise offered by several plots in the wonderfully named Moonlight Territories, in Big Sky, Montana, a mountain landscape celebrated by skiers and nature lovers alike. In Canada, the Paradise Bay estate in British Columbia is similarly expansive, offering 126 acres of forest, rocks, bays and coves on the shores of Bridge Lake.
Heathcliff and Cathy were fated to remain bound to the moors around Haworth, but for those who like to keep their wilderness within easy reach of shops and restaurants, the opportunity to acquire a remarkable private estate in the Adirondack Park, upstate New York, has come up for the first time in more than a century.
Long Lake, New York | Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty
Whitney Park, near the town of Long Lake, is an ecological and cultural treasure twice the size of Manhattan, with mountains, forest, lakes and streams offering a unique backdrop to two Adirondack Great Camps, not to mention a network of hunting and fishing cabins once frequented by the illustrious guests of its original owner, politician and financier William Collins Whitney. Conservationists as well as statesmen have sought solace in the estate’s natural beauty and, like “Wuthering Heights,” its wilderness continues to shape significant conversations to this day.
As ski season continues, explore snow homes in stunning winter landscapes
Kate Marburger
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