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1840s: Bella dreams of more than working in an coaching inn in Yorkshire
The Innkeeper’s Daughter
What you need to know before your trail
Bella may only be 13 but she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. She lives with her family – mother, father and two older brothers in an old inn in the Yorkshire countryside. She dreams of being a teacher but she has to help her mother in the inn as her father is ill and her brothers do nothing to help. Then her mother confides in her that she is expecting another child. With her father so ill,she is sworn to secrecy.
Times get harder and harder and then tragedy strikes. Bella is now forced to stay at home and help the business and the family stay alive. She is hard done by and her dreams are still there. But every now and then there’s a little life in her life by the name of Jamie Lucan – the eighteen-year-old son of a wealthy landowner in a neighbouring coastal village. Despite their different social classes, Jamie has more in common with Bella than she thinks.
But then her mother announces something that will change all of their lives..
Travel Guide
Bella’s Hull
Of course Hull has changed somewhat since Bella’s days but there are a few places to go where you can see the Hull of old:
Streetlife Museum in the High Street. The High Street was where many of the hotels and inns were located – many of them small so they probably just had one room on offer per night.
The Market place – the hub of Hull back in Bella’s day
“Market Place was thronging with people: women with shopping baskets over their arms, well-dressed gentlewomen in furs, lifting their hems so as not to muddy them on the wet and slushy pavements ”
A good brisk wall across the city will take you to Paragon street where the fictional Maritime pub was. You may well see Bella around these parts.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: The Innkeeper’s Daughter
Author/Guide Val Wood Destination: Holderness, Hull Departure Time: 1840s
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