Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson
Author’s Note
I write historical fiction because I love research and I love creating stories. If you’re like me and would like to know where fact and fiction meet in a work of historical fiction, read on. If not, you can skip ahead to the acknowledgments. I promise I will not judge you at all.
When I first started dreaming up Blackmoore, I knew I wanted it to be set in northern England, surrounded by the moors and looking out over the ocean. But I didn’t know if such a place existed. So I flew there, rented a car, and drove all over the north of England, from Manchester to Whitby and back, in search of the perfect location for my story. I found it at Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire.
Yes, this town really does exist. I have tried to describe it accurately, but I don’t think words can do justice to the charm and character and windswept beauty of the place. It was a smuggling port for hundreds of years, and over the centuries everyone in the village became involved in that trade. In fact, it was said that a bolt of silk could pass from the beach all the way up to the top of the hill without once seeing the light of day.
How, you ask? All the houses were connected by secret cupboards and passageways. In fact, a villager there told me that someone had recently knocked out a cupboard to do some renovating in her kitchen and found herself staring right into her neighbor’s house.
The estate of Blackmoore is set in the same location as the real estate of Ravenscar, which did (and maybe still does) have secret passageways and was involved in the smuggling trade. And there are still elderly villagers who will warn you to stay away from the moors at night or Linger’s Ghost will get you.
The ruined abbey is based on Fountains Abbey, which is near Harrogate, North Yorkshire. It had the most lovely feeling of being haunted by very friendly ghosts. Its towers were filled with rooks, and its ruin was both beautiful and tragic.
The interior of Blackmoore is modeled after Castle Howard, also in North Yorkshire.
My characters and their lives are purely fictional. But my research did inspire my story. For example, when trying to choose a surname for Henry, I came across the name Delafield. I liked the sound of it, but I wanted to make sure it was a good historical fit for Henry. When I researched the name, I discovered that the Delafield family name originally came from the family of Count de la Feld, a very old family whose seat was the Chateaux of La Feld in Alsace, France. Hubertus De La Feld emigrated to England in 1066, earned himself some large grants of land, and the family began its rise in stature in England. What really clinched their ambition, though, was when John Delafield became a count of the Holy Roman Empire in 1697 due to his valor at the battle of Zenta. When I read that, I imagined a family that thirsted for another title, an English one, and the Delafield family ambition, which was the crux of the obstacle between Kate and Henry, was born.
Herr Louis Spohr is the one character who is based completely on fact. He was a German musician and composer involved in the shift from Classicism to Romanticism in the early 1800s. He did write an opera based on Faust, and he and his wife, Dorette, did travel to England in 1820 and give musical performances. I don’t know if they toured outside of London, however, and I created the name for his piano piece.
I greatly enjoyed researching birds for this story. One site I found very helpful was www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdidentifier. On this site you can view photos of birds, read about their habits, and listen to their calls. Although I did not name Kate’s dark bird in the story, I based it on the black drongo, which is indigenous to India.
Much of my research about Robin Hood’s Bay, smuggling, and the moors is owed to a book I picked up in a tiny museum in Robin Hood’s Bay—AHistory of Robin Hood’s Bay: The Story of a Yorkshire Community, by Barrie Farnill.
If there are mistakes or historical inaccuracies, you can blame them on my fallible nature as a human being. Or they could be the product of my being a writer and therefore being willing to bend fact a little for the sake of good fiction.