Hayslope

Hayslope,The village in Loamshire where Adam Bede lives; the scene of many of the incidents in Adam Bede. "That rich undulating district of Loamshire to which Hayslope belonged, lies close to a grim outskirt of Stonyshire, overlooked by its barren hills as a pretty blooming sister may sometimes be seen linked in the arm of a rugged, tall, swarthy brother. . . . High up against the horizon were the huge conical masses of hill, like giant mounds intended to fortify this region of corn and grass against the keen and hungry winds of the north ; not distant enough to be clothed in purple mystery, but with sombre greenish sides visibly specked with sheep . . . And directly below them the eye rested on a more advanced line of hanging woods, divided by bright patches of pasture or furrowed crops . . . Then came the valley, where the woods grew thicker, as if they had rolled down and hurried together from the patches left smooth on the slope, that they might take the better care of the tall mansion which lifted its parapets and sent its faint blue summer smoke among them." The original of Hayslope, Loamshire, is the little village of Ellastone, Staffordshire, where Eobert Evans, George Eliot's father (" Adam Bede ") lived in his youth. (See Masefield, Staffordshire, p. 132 ; Mottram, True Story of George Eliot, p. 56 ; Parkinson, Scenes from the George Eliot Country, p. 87.) Roston, where Robert Evans was born, has occasionally been mistakenly suggested as an original.

<em>Adam Bede</em>

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