The Rector of Haworth's three daughters were with him last week as he prepared his sermons for Christmas and the new year, given in the church at the top of the steep hill of Main Street.
"Yes, I have three daughters, but they are not Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and happily they have all grown up to have families of their own," said the Rev Peter Mayo-Smith, incumbent at St Michael and All Angels parish church, where 190 years ago the Rev Patrick Brontë lived in the adjacent parsonage with his own three girls, the writers now established as among the most famous Englishwomen ever to have lived. "I did discover I was married on the same day as Rev Brontë married his Maria though, which was rather spooky."
But the Anglican clergyman does not really have to search about for reminders of his celebrated predecessor. Any time he steps into his church he finds 30 or 40 visitors clustered around the floor plaque that marks the early graves of Charlotte and Emily Jane. "It is very definitely a place of pilgrimage," he said. "People leave money and flowers, poems and books, every day."
Leaflets in the West Yorkshire church are being translated into Japanese, Chinese and Korean and visitors from Europe, Australia, New Zealand and America are commonplace.
"We have come here because of the books, of course," say an Italian couple, shaking off the cold rain in the porch of the church on Friday. "I studied them at university and I love them very much. Wuthering Heightsis my favourite," explains the young woman, who plans to stay for a week. In the old parsonage, which houses the Brontë museum, custodians often have to put up the sign asking tourists to wait outside for 10 minutes because the place is full.
But all is not well in "Brontëland". This winter Mayo-Smith has found himself at the centre of a battle to communicate to the wider world just how popular Haworth is as a tourist destination. The fate of the historic parish church, together with the future appearance of the whole Pennine village, is soon to be decided. In the middle of this month time will run out both on an appeal for maintenance funds for St Michael's and on a plan to build more modern housing estates in Haworth.
Regardless of the sale at auction last month of a miniature handwritten manuscript penned by the 14-year-old Charlotte for £690,850 and of the recent release of two new acclaimed film versions of Brontë novels,Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, the geographical legacy of the writers, a crucial source of local income, is in peril.
Along with John Huxley, secretary of the parochial church council and chairman of the parish council, the rector is fighting to preserve his church. Since the duo revealed its plight a year ago they have found staunch support among parishioners and from the international Brontë fan club, but they still need to find tens of thousands of pounds more.
St Michael's roof is leaking badly in several places and the plasterwork and rare wall paintings above the altar are disintegrating. Unsightly plastic sheeting covers the beams over the organ console at the entrance to the corner of the church which is now designated the Brontë Chapel.
Of equal importance to many in Haworth this new year is the parallel struggle to deter developers from building further housing estates across the hills once crossed by the literary sisters and their potent cast of characters.
"There is an assault on the Brontë landscape going on," said Huxley. "It is not deliberate, but the reason so many people come here is to see the streets and the hills and moor that the sisters wrote about. Some of these views should be sacrosanct."
Campaigners point out that the village is already dotted with new housing estates and several of the older villagers already regard their Haworth as a distant memory. The narrow, cobbled streets, or more correctly "setted" streets, that the Brontës walked may survive, but cul-de-sacs of bungalows and modern terraces are visible at every turn. Nevertheless, a further 14 potential development sites have been identified in a Local Development Framework document under consultation.
Huxley is bemused. "The document says it wants to preserve and promote Haworth as a tourist destination," he continued. "After all, it's perhaps second in England only to Stratford. Then, just a few pages on, it says we have to have new housing estates."
On the other side of the valley from the parish church stands the former home of the Merrall family, one-time mill owners and village benefactors who are commemorated in the stained-glass windows of the church. It has been usefully converted into an imposing youth hostel, but the once wild land surrounding the house has been covered with new builds and another planning application is lurking in the wings.
Huxley understands the need for new housing, he said, particularly for young first-time buyers, and he and his fellow campaigners are not opposed to shouldering some of the burden imposed by Bradford council's edict that 45,500 new homes must be built in the wider area, but they are desperate to protect what they – and English Heritage – regard as a location of international significance.
"There are three old mills in the village," said Huxley. "Surely we can develop a couple of these as brownfield sites, without going out into the greenfield areas?"
Mayo-Smith adds that Haworth may have craft shops and the Villette Coffee Shop, but it is not a well-to-do area and cannot look after its own future unaided: "There are houses I go to around here with no carpet and no paint or paper on the walls. There is need in Haworth."
This year the campaigners will be launching fresh strategies to get across their case. Not only will they be making a new appeal for repairs to the dilapidated roof of the Old School Room, built by Patrick Brontë and once taught in by Charlotte, but they are also planning to cost repairs to the wall paintings and sound out support for an annual Haworth Festival.
Since the villagers have begun to realise the parlous state of the church roof, they have rallied round. The Baptist, Catholic and Methodist congregations have offered support. Calendars with photographs of assorted naked villagers, one including the Baptist minister, are being sold to raise money. Small sums of money have also arrived in envelopes from Brontë readers in America.
Now 20 January looms large in Haworth, which is when English Heritage will come back to see if the church has raised the required £65,000 in order for it to release a pot of £100,000 to repair the worst side of the roof. So far the parish has raised just under £30,000. By chance 20 January is also the last day for objections to be registered to the planned housing developments before Bradford council rules on Haworth's future.
The isolated hill village, 700ft above sea level and still buffeted even in middling winter weather by the "wuthering" winds, is waiting to learn its fate. guardian/bronte-landscape-housing-tourist-trade
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