Photography of Mark Davis

Mark makes his home in Haworth
 amidst the rugged landscape
 that inspired the Brontës
 and which continues
 to inspire him
 to deliver world-class photographs.

Mark-Davis-photography/yorkshire/haworth/
Ferndean manor/mark-davis.html

Nature around Haworth

February - an overview February can be a cold unforgiving month with snow heavy rain and cold north winds, but it is also the month where the first signs that spring is not far away. Catkins sometimes called 'lambs tails' their golden tassels can be seen hanging from the branches of Hazel Plants are beginning to show signs of life; the snowdrops are flowering, time-lapse of a snowdrop flowering here... Daffodils shoots are now above ground in readiness for flowering in March. Migrant birds such as Redwing, Fieldfare and Waxwings which have spent the winter in Britain can still be seen. Later in the month Lapwings will return to moorland. Garden birds such as the Blackbird Blue Tit and Robin will still find food in short supply, putting out food for them will be help. This will encourage other birds such as Long Tailed Tits, Bullfinch and Goldcrests to visit. A period of fine weather and you will hear birds such as the Chaffinch singing. Frogs will move to breeding ponds to spawn. Waxwing

Red House: cabinet sees sense

Richard Wilcocks writes: 
Good news! At the cabinet meeting at Huddersfield Town Hall yesterday afternoon it was recommended that the Red House Museum should not close. All the friends and campaigners who have been so wonderfully active in the past couple of weeks can now breathe more easily for a while, hoping that Kirklees Council as a whole will do the right thing when it meets on 22 February. Thanks to everybody who has been in touch, especially to you, Gordon North - your local knowledge is impressively wide-ranging and your alacrity is admirable.

The cabinet made it clear that there should be a new business plan for all the museums in the authority which would include ways of making museums pay their way. This means admission charges, increasing visitor numbers and allowing weddings to take place. All of which is much better than a crassly simple closure plan.

English Heritage has been approached to get the ball rolling to make Red House into a Grade One listed building. It is a Grade Two at the moment. Grade One status could be awarded not because of the architecture but because of the history. Let us hope for this, because it means that new grants would be available. bronteparsonage/red-house-cabinet-sees-sense

The Bronte museum in 1935 agreed to buy the Apostles cupboard for 25 pounds.

Look for the story on Stubbs family history

North Lees Hall

North Lees Hall is one of seven houses built by Sir Robert Eyre for his seven sons in and around the village of Hathersage.  It is said to have been the inspiration for Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre after Charlotte Bronte visited it while staying at the vicarage.  

The road to North Lees Hall is described in Charlotte Bronte’s book :
 “the road ( to Thornfield Hall ) is a soft mantle of greens in spring and a blaze of gold in the Autumn, being gently sheltered by the thicket of foliage of the English summer days. Peace walks with he, who treads this way.

stubbs family history/the-eyres-north-lees-and-jane-eyre-also-little-john-buried-hathersage-church/

cathy-smith.suite101
-------------
Charlotte Bronte visited Hathersage in 1845 to stay with her old school friend Ellen Nussey at Hathersage Rectory, whose brother was the vicar of the village and it was while he was away on his honeymoon that Charlotte arrived to keep her friend company for a few weeks during the summer.  On Irish rovers  you see pictures how a Derbyshire  summer looks.

Distance Haworth/ Hathersage. It was three stories high . . . a gentleman’s manor-house . . . battlements around the top gave it a picturesque look’

Grotere kaart weergeven
peakdistrictinformation/towns/villages

In 1845 Charlotte Brontë stayed at Hathersage vicarage with her friend Ellen Nussey and regularly visited the locally important Eyre family at North Lees Hall.  Charlotte’s letters reveal Hathersage as the village Morton in Jane Eyre (published 1847). The landlord of the George Inn was a Mr Morton at the time Brontë stayed here and she borrowed the Eyre family name for her heroine.  There’s a reference in the novel to ‘Mr Oliver’s needle factory’ in Morton, and there were several needle mills in Hathersage then.

The novel’s crenellated Thornfield is clearly based on North Lees Hall. Robert Eyre is said to have built seven houses for seven sons and you can still see North Lees, an impressive Tudor manor just a short pleasant walk from the village.  It is rumoured there was indeed a ‘mad woman in the attic’ in its early history, just like Bertha Mason in Brontë’s novel. Agnes Ashurst was ‘reputed to have become demented and was confined to a room on the second floor where the walls were padded for her safety’. She later died in a fire.

‘Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.’
And dangerous he looked:  his black eyes darted sparks.
the squeee/in-charlotte-brontes-footsteps
diane-heartshaped/hathersage-walk

Charlotte Bronte visiting Hathersage in Derbyshire.

Charlotte Bronte is usually associated with the village of Haworth in Yorkshire as this is where most of her novels are set. But possibly her most famous novel, Jane Eyre, seems to be set in the small village of  Hathersage in Derbyshire. In the summer of 1845 Charlotte visited this village in the heart of the Peak District. She was 29 and had come to stay with her old school friend Ellen Nussey at the Rectory. 
Charlotte arrived by stage coach which stopped at the George Inn. Local historians are keen to point out how she used her visit to great effect in collecting impressions for her famously passionate novel, published a couple of years later. In Chapter 11 we find Jane newly arrived and waiting nervously in The George to meet her new employer; the dashing Mr. R. 
" A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on the walls as inn rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such ornaments on the mantelpiece, such prints, including a portrait of George the Third, and another of the Prince of Wales, and a representation of the death of Wolfe. All this is visible to you by the light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and by that of an excellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet; my muff and umbrella lie on the table, and I am warming away the numbness and chill contracted by sixteen hours’ exposure to the rawness of an October day… ": 
It was on one of the tombstones in the graveyard of St. Michael’s Church that Charlotte saw the local family name ’Eyre’ which she chose to adopt for her heroine. During her stay she took the opportunity to explore, walking on the moors and visiting many of the houses scattered around the area. One of these houses, the crenellated North Lees, is said to be the model for Thorn Field Hall, home of Mr. Rochester and the place where he and Jane fell in love. The George Inn which still stands on the main street has been welcoming travellers for over 500 years, first as an alehouse, and, since 1770, as an inn. homesteadbb.free-online.co.uk/derbys
www.george-hotel