She is responsible for one of our most celebrated love poems, but until her appearance in the list of Greatest Black Britons, few were aware of her origins.

Chris Lloyd looks at the strange live - and even stranger love - of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

COXHOE Hall is a ruin now, destroyed after the war when the prisoners left and the vandals set in. Once it was a Gothic pile, home to the most celebrated female poet of her day who wrote one of the most tender love poems in the English language and who lived through one of the most extraordinary love stories in all literature.

And, to cap it all, this week this Durham lass was voted the 38th greatest black Briton of all time.

She was born Elizabeth Barrett but when she married fellow poet Robert Browning, after a painfully protracted courtship, she added his surname to create the name by which the Victorians celebrated her.

Lieutenant Hercie Barrett started her story in 1655, when he arrived with the English fleet on the Caribbean island of Jamaica. He created an estate which, as each generation set more slaves to work, made the Barrett family wealthy.

So wealthy, indeed, that in 1801, 11 siblings embarked on a 36-year legal wrangle to determine the size of their inheritance.

One of those siblings was Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett, who had "dark, handsome looks" - the first of many hints that over the generations in the West Indies, the Barretts had acquired some Creole blood.

There was a raising of eyebrows when Elizabeth cropped up among the greatest black Britons - "the daughter of a slave-owner but not generally though to have been mulatto", said the Times - with boxers Frank Bruno and Lennox Lewis just in front and pop-singer Craig David just behind. But pictures of Elizabeth and her sisters show they shared features that might be considered striking for a white woman, and her greatest work was entitled Sonnets from the Portuguese - "Portuguese" being her husband's nickname for her, derived from her dusky colouring.

EDWARD Barrett Moulton-Barrett was her father, born in Jamaica but sent to England to study. He lived in Newcastle with another family of Jamaican plantation owners, the Graham-Clarkes who owned land, breweries and glassworks from Newcastle to York.

In 1805, in Gosforth Church, he married their eldest daughter, Mary, and rented Coxhoe Hall, built by John Burdon before he created Hardwick Hall on the outskirts of Sedgefield.

"It was an imposing house built in 1725 in a castellated Gothic style and situated on a hill among thick beech woods, five miles from Durham," says Margaret Forster in her biography of the poetess. "Here, nine months later, at seven in the evening of March 6, 1806, Mary and Edward's first child was born, and named Elizabeth."

Next year, the first son, Edward, was born at the Hall and in February 1809 the pair were baptised at nearby St Helen's Church in Kelloe. "Before the Barrett name in the register stood the local names of a farmer, a labourer, a pitman and a shoemaker alongside whom Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett Esq, of Coxhoe Hall, native of St James, Jamaica, looked both odd and exotic," says Margaret Forster.

Yet Mr Barrett Moulton-Barrett was not happy. His brother Samuel had settled in Richmond, in North Yorkshire, but the legal battle was sapping his inheritance and the price of sugar was plummeting. Plus the in-laws were constantly popping down from Newcastle.

In spring 1809, the Barretts left Coxhoe Hall, and ended up in the ominously-named Hope End, a secluded house in Herefordshire. Here, Elizabeth developed a catalogue of health complaints, and by the age of 15 was addicted to laudanum - opium mixed with alcohol. It dulled her pains, although no one ever diagnosed what caused them, and drifted her off to sleep.

SHE stayed in her room, reading and writing and pondering on the nature of love. She came to despise her mother's lot, which she saw as nursing 11 children and being subservient to her father. If that was love and marriage, she reasoned, it was not for her.

Elizabeth's mother died in 1828 followed quickly by her favourite brother, Edward - another sickly child, he'd been moved to Torquay for the air, but drowned in the sea.

With the abolition of slavery in 1833, the Barretts' plantation became even less lucrative, and the family downsized to Wimpole Street in London. Here, her father decreed that none of his children should ever marry, and he shoo'd suitors from the door. One guess is that he was somehow embarrassed by his family's mixed blood.

Locked in her room, the invalid Elizabeth poured her heart into her works, her 1833 translation of Prometheus Bound by the Greek playwright Aeschylus winning rave reviews.

She followed the progress of other writers, notably William Wordsworth, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and a young poet, six years her junior, called Robert Browning. He wrote such lines as "O to be in England, Now that April's here" and "God's in his heaven, All's right with the world".

Having studied his work for a decade, she wrote him into a poem published in 1844. He read it and on January 10, 1845, wrote to her: "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett. I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart - and I love you too."

It was the start of the affair which was, for the first four months, purely a penny post affair. She was 39, a pallid invalid who believed herself above love and sex, with an ogre of a father as a gatekeeper; he was 33, a vigorous, passionate man - how, she fretted, could he ever fancy her?

After months of badgering, Robert was allowed to visit Wimpole Street when Elizabeth's father was out on business. The meeting lasted an hour, and Robert dashed home and scribbled off a proposal of marriage. Elizabeth was horrified, and immediately destroyed it - but really she was gladdened.

Over 20 months, they exchanged 574 letters, and regularly - and secretly - met. Elizabeth's health improved dramatically - the restorative powers of the prospect of an illicit meeting with your lover are amazing - and she even went outside.

But still her father hung over them like the sword of Damocles. How could she tell him her whole life had been a lie? How could she tell him she wanted carnal knowledge of a man? How could she tell him she'd been courting behind his back? How fast would the sword come crashing down when she told him she wanted to taste the forbidden fruit of marriage?

So she never told him. After much agonising, on September 12, 1846, she slipped away to a nearby church, fainting 200 yards from its door and requiring a cab to complete her journey. Inside, she married Robert, the clergyman open mouthed in amazement at joining two of the most eminent poets of the day without anyone else present.

The happy couple said their farewells at the door. She removed her ring and returned to her father's abode, but, on September 19, she slipped away once more, taking her dog Flush, her Northumbrian maid Wilson and two cases crammed with love letters and love poems.

AT Euston station, she met Robert, and they made their way to Paris and then Italy where they settled. When her father heard of the elopement, he exploded in fury and disinherited her. She never spoke to him again.

In 1850, she published to huge acclaim Sonnets from the Portuguese, which had been written as her affair had grown. These included How Shall I Love Thee?

In Italy, she became enraptured by politics which chimed with the great themes of her life. Her work was about freedom: the oppression of wives and daughters by husbands and fathers, the oppression of slaves on her plantations, the oppression of children in the mills, the oppression of Italians under the Austrians.

She, though, had broken free from her oppression. Her life in Italy with Robert was very happy. She bore him a son in 1849 and died, romantically, in his arms in Florence on June 29, 1861.

A plaque was erected to her memory by public subscription in Kelloe church in 1897. It records her birthday correctly but is a month out in the date of her death.

Her nearby birthplace of Coxhoe Hall fell into the possession of the National Coal Board and housed Italian Prisoners of War before being pulled down in 1952. Since 1985, Durham City Council has created woodland walks through its grounds, and the dovecote, stables and ornamental gardens that may have featured in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's earliest memories can still be made out.

Sonnets from The Portuguese XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right:

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.