My Lady Dedlock has been down at what she calls, in familiar conversation, her “place” in Lincolnshire. The waters are out in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge in the park has been sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground for half a mile in breadth is a stagnant river with melancholy trees for islands in it and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain. My Lady Dedlock’s place has been extremely dreary.
The weather for many a day and night has been so wet that the trees seem wet through, and the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman’s axe can make no crash or crackle as they fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave quagmires where they pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for the falling rain.
Bleak House has a strong claim to be Charles Dickens' greatest novel, and Rockingham Castle, near Market Harborough, played an important part in its genesis:
Charles Dickens was a regular visitor to the castle and a great friend of the then owners, Richard and Lavinia Watson. In November 1849, he spent several days here and delighted his hosts by acting out scenes from Nicholas Nickleby and School for Scandal alongside Mrs. Watson's cousin, Miss Boyle.
The house and grounds certainly wove their magic upon the author's fevered imagination. As "the first shadows of a new story" began "hovering in a ghostly way" around him, he made several visits to Rockingham Castle to commit to memory in preparation for its becoming "Chesney Wold" in his novel Bleak House.
Rockingham Castle is in Northamptonshire and looks out across the Welland Valley to Leicestershire and Rutland. Stamford, where Lincolnshire begins, is some 15 miles away.
All of which means that in the passage above Dickens is describing flooding in the Welland Valley below Market Harborough.
This is not the only connection between the great novelist and this part of the world – see my post I could have voted in Dickens's Eatanswill by-election.
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