Old pictures from London

Old pictures from London

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Charlotte Bronte's comment on the visit of Queen Victoria to Brussels

Read the comment from Charlotte Bronte on: 

thebrusselsbrontegroup/leopoldqueenvictoria

You ask about Queen Victoria's visit to Brussels. I saw her for an instant flashing through the Rue Royale in a carriage and six, surrounded by soldiers. She was laughing and talking very gaily. She looked a little stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed, not much dignity or pretension about her. The Belgians liked her very well on the whole. They said she enlivened the sombre court of King Leopold, which is usually as gloomy as a conventicle.

Well wishers from around the world have donated cash to church repair fund

The Telegraph and Argus 

Benefactors across the UK and in the US have pledged their support to Haworth Parish Church £1.25 million restoration appeal.
Donations totalling almost £5,000 have flooded in from as far afield as London, Gloucester, Northern Ireland and the US following a call for help made in the Telegraph & Argus on Boxing Day.
Before Christmas, church leaders warned they could lose a £100,000 English Heritage grant to repair the badly leaking south roof unless they raised £65,000 in match funding before the middle of January.
An appeal started last spring had only raised £33,000 meaning fundraisers had to find the remaining £32,000 in a matter of weeks.
Haworth Parish Council chairman John Huxley, who is also chairman of the church’s Future Group and secretary of the Parochial Church Council said: “The response has been superb and we feel deeply humbled by it.
“Since Boxing Day we have received more than £4,500 from well wishers. Obviously we have still got to raise a lot more but it is a big step along the way.
“People are now aware of the situation and we have more hope than we had before.”
Following the report in the T&A, the church’s plight was also publicised in the national and international media, including in Ulster, Wales and the US.
In the last seven days, a donation of £1,000 was made through the parish church website and Haworth Primary School gardening club donated a further £500. A charitable trust in Ilkley has also contacted the church to discuss a possible donation.
Priest-in-charge of the Parish Church The Reverend Peter Mayo-Smith said: “It has been wonderful really to realise that so many people do care so passionately about the church. A lot of people have been putting their hands in their pockets and sending us donations. It is very humbling and we are extremely grateful. I am now optimistic we will reach our target.”
The church is visited by more than one million people every year. Its crypt contains the bodies of famous literary sisters Charlotte and Emily Bronte.
The sisters’ father, the Reverend Patrick Bronte, was the vicar in the 1800s.
Donations can be made online at haworthchurch.co.uk or cheques made payable to Haworth Church Restoration Fund can be sent c/o the treasurer, 17 North View Terrace, Haworth, BD22 8HJ

Parsonage

Parsonage

January. What did the bronte Sisters see when they were walking over the moors?

The cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.

Jane Eyre/ Charlotte Bronte

 

January marks the start of the new year, the shortest day has passed and the days are lengthening, will be some time before we see any effect. Cold days with heavy frosts and snow are a feature of the month.

As winter progresses food is scarce for wildlife, any snow on the ground compounds the problem. There are fewer berries such as Holly, Rowan Hawthorn on the branches in the hedgerows. Birds are active after dawn foraging for food and hour before sunset eating in readiness for the long night ahead. This is a good time to feed birds as they will appreciate a meal and you may be rewarded by seeing other species such as Bullfinch as their need for food makes them less timid.

 

Redwing and Fieldfare which migrated from Northern Europe to winter in Britain can be seen. If you are lucky you may also see Waxwings; a winter visitor from Russia and Northern Europe. They are usually spotted where berries such as Rowan are found.

Plants are in their dormant stage, the exception are bulbs such as Snowdrops which have energy stored from the previous growing season, later in the month their new shoots can be seen just poking through the soil. Time-lapse of a snowdrop flowering here...

Photo's parsonage

flickr.com/photos/oxfordshirechurches//photostream/

Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle, by Clement K. Shorter

Many changes have been made since Mr. Brontë died, but the house still retains its essentially interesting features.  In the time of the Brontës, it is true, the front outlook was as desolate as to-day it is attractive.  Then there was a little piece of barren ground running down to the walls of the churchyard, with here and there a currant-bush as the sole adornment.  Now we see an abundance of trees and a well-kept lawn. 

Miss Ellen Nussey well remembers seeing Emily and Anne, on a fine summer afternoon, sitting on stools in this bit of garden plucking currants from the poor insignificant bushes.  

There was no premonition of the time, not so far distant, when the rough doorway separating the churchyard from the garden, which was opened for their mother when they were little children, should be opened again time after time in rapid succession for their own biers to be carried through.  This gateway is now effectively bricked up.  In the days of the Brontës it was reserved for the p. 60passage of the dead—a grim arrangement, which, strange to say, finds no place in any one of the sisters’ stories.  

We enter the house, and the door on the right leads into Mr. Brontë’s study, always called the parlour; that on the left into the dining-room, where the children spent a great portion of their lives.  From childhood to womanhood, indeed, the three girls regularly breakfasted with their father in his study.  

In the dining-room—a square and simple room of a kind common enough in the houses of the poorer middle-classes—they ate their mid-day dinner, their tea and supper. 
 Mr. Brontë joined them at tea, although he always dined alone in his study.  The children’s dinner-table has been described to me by a visitor to the house.  At one end sat Miss Branwell, at the other, Charlotte, with Emily and Anne on either side.  Branwell was then absent.  The living was of the simplest.  A single joint, followed invariably by one kind or another of milk-pudding.  Pastry was unknown in the Brontë household.  Milk-puddings, or food composed of milk and rice, would seem to have made the principal diet of Emily and Anne Brontë, and to this they added a breakfast of Scotch porridge, which they shared with their dogs.  It is more interesting, perhaps, to think of all the daydreams in that room, of the mass of writing which was achieved there, of the conversations and speculation as to the future.  
Miss Nussey has given a pleasant picture of twilight when Charlotte and she walked with arms encircling one another round and round the table, and Emily and Anne followed in similar fashion.  There was no lack of cheerfulness and of hope at that period.  

Behind Mr. Brontë’s studio was the kitchen; and there we may easily picture the Brontë children telling stories to Tabby or Martha, or to whatever servant reigned at the time, and learning, as all of them did, to become thoroughly domesticated—Emily most of all.  Behind the dining-room was a p. 61peat-room, which, when Charlotte was married in 1854, was cleared out and converted into a little study for Mr. Nicholls.  The staircase with its solid banister remains as it did half a century ago; and at its foot one is still shown the corner which tradition assigns as the scene of Emily’s conflict with her dog Keeper.  On the right, at the back, as you mount the staircase, was a small room allotted to Branwell as a studio. 

On the other side of this staircase, also at the back, was the servants’ room.  In the front of the house, immediately over the dining-room, was Miss Branwell’s room, afterwards the spare bedroom until Charlotte Brontë married.  In that room she died. 

On the left, over Mr. Brontë’s study, was Mr. Brontë’s bedroom.  It was the room which, for many years, he shared with Branwell, and it was in that room that Branwell and his father died at an interval of twenty years.  On the staircase, half-way up, was a grandfather’s clock, which Mr. Brontë used to wind up every night on his way to bed.  He always went to bed at nine o’clock, and Miss Nussey well remembers his stentorian tones as he called out as he left his study and passed the dining-room door—

‘Don’t be up late, children’—which they usually were.  

Between these two front rooms upstairs, and immediately over the passage, with a door facing the staircase, was a box room; but this was the children’s nursery, where for many years the children slept, where the bulk of their little books were compiled, and where, it is more than probable, The Professor and Jane Eyre were composed.

Gutenberg

On this day in 1844

Charlotte Bronte left the Penssionat at Brussels for home. While studying there she had received a Diploma.

TO MISS EMILY J. BRONTË

‘Brussels, December 19th, 1843.

‘Dear E. J.,—I have taken my determination.  I hope to be at home the day after New Year’s Day.  I have told Mme. Héger.  But in order to come home I shall be obliged to draw on my cash for another £5.  I have only £3 at present, and as there are several little things I should like to buy before I leave Brussels—which you know cannot be got as well in England—£3 would not suffice.  Low spirits have afflicted me much lately, but I hope all will be well when I get home—above all, if I find papa and you and B. and A. well.  I am not ill in body.  It is only the mind which is a trifle shaken—for want of comfort.
‘I shall try to cheer up now.—Good-bye.

‘C. B.’

What will happen in 2012 in Brontëland?

2012 in Brontëland

Brontë landscape's battle for survival as new housing threatens tourist trade Haworth's church roof needs repairs, while plans for housing estates overshadow moors where the sisters walked

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