The Manor on the Moors like it’s predecessor The Little Church by the Sea is set in the fictional area of North East Yorkshire. If it was real, it would appear on the maps north of Whitby but south of Guisborough … somewhere ….

Alice is living in Rawscar, the seaside village at the heart of The Little Church by the Sea which would look a bit like this:

Runswick Bay (my photo)

Langbarnby is slightly further inland, it’s a moorland village about three miles away from Rawscar. In my imagination it looks not entirely unlike Goathland, but it’s slightly closer to the sea (Goathland is in the middle of the North Yorkshire Moors, surrounded by a sea of heather. It’s gorgeous. Go there!)  The two villages are closely linked: they share a vicar for a start, and a traditional rivalry that still spills over in the Shrove Tuesday football game that I’m writing about in my next novel.

Goathland (photo from Pixabay)

Misterley Manor is on the Rawscar side of Langbarnby.  It’s not based on any real place though in my imagination, as I’ve already said, it looks a bit like Grey Towers, the stately home on the edge of Middlesbrough. Misterley is a made up name. (Of course ALL the names were made up by me in the first place …) Whereas both Rawscar and Langbarnby are names that could feasibly be of Old Norse origin (a nod to the Viking settlers on the north-east coast of England) “Misterley” was invented by the Lattimore family when they became rich (as was their own surname) because “Langbarnby Hall” didn’t sound grand enough!

I’m not an artist, by any stretch of the imagination, but this is a quick sketch that I drew for my own use of the area around Rawscar and Langbarnby. Please forgive the poor quality of drawing, the fact that it isn’t to scale and you’ll have to imagine the moors and the hills for yourself! (Basically, the moors come down to where the old railway line is).