Brian Wilks has written to the Telegraph about the planned wind farm on the moors:

Patrick Bronte

 

SIR – Patrick Brontë, the father of the Brontë sisters, would not agree that Brontë country is no longer worth visiting (Letters, May 1) because of wind turbines.

Throughout his 40 years as chairman of the parish council in the first half of the 19th century he encouraged innovation, the piping of drinking water and the cleaning up of open sewers – all “modern” improvements opposed by interested local mill owners.

Haworth Moor is a large open space. There is much in Haworth to attract the tourist – not least the chance to reflect on the improvements encouraged by its parson that turned the stinking slum township into a more habitable space.

Wind turbines would have intrigued Patrick Brontë as examples of what he termed “our scientific age”. Telegraph.co.uk

The garden which was nearly all grass and posessing only a few stunted thorns and shrubs and a few currant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their bit of fruit garden, is now a perfect arcadia of floral culture and beauty.

The garden's designer Tracy Foster notes the absence of any detailed references to gardening in Charlotte's letters to friends – the most informative part of the Bronte Society's archive. Andrew Denton of Welcome to Yorkshire says:

She did not discuss gardening or the garden with her lifelong friend Ellen Nussey – and she would have done if it was a part of her life which had strong meaning. It is fascinating, given the sisters' love of the landscape that surrounded them and which provided so much escape and inspiration. Charlotte was a very adept painter of flowers too, but it seems she took little interest in trying to grow her own.

One passage in Nussey's Reminiscences of 1871, reprinted in Early Visitors to Haworth also goes further than the negative evidence of gardening failing to feature in the sisters' papers.

The Parsonage is quite another habitation now from the Parsonage of earlier days. The garden which was nearly all grass and posessing only a few stunted thorns and shrubs and a few currant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their bit of fruit garden, is now a perfect arcadia of floral culture and beauty.

Read on: guardian/brontes-sisters-haworth-yorkshire-chelsea-flower-show 

Interesting ideas of the rain in 1848 in combination with the TB in the Bronte Family

The handwriting at the bottom of the text is Patrick Bronte's and he comments:
"Mr S..... surgeon, Leeds, said that change of place or climate, could prove beneficial, only in the early stage of consumption - that afterwards, the excitment caused by change of scene, and beds, and strange company, did harm."
Read more on:
Bronte weather

Ages ago while i was beginning to research the Bronte's lives and the connections to the weather i noticed (from the Shacklton weather records kept from 1801 until 1857) that the year that Branwell Bronte and Emily Bronte died of TB, 1848, had very high rainfall: 40.38 inches when the average rainfall was 32 inches. And of course Anne died of TB in May 1849. So i started to wonder if there is a connection between wet weather having a bad affect on TB. I've tried to get hold of historical writings on TB and also to look at contemporary reports too. However it's not been that easy to find any research that links the two. Read on Bronte weather