Carts laden with the minister's furniture moving to Haworth

Charlotte Bronte was a  girl of six years of age when her father exchanged Thornton for Haworth. We have no glimpse of her at Thornton; we have little enough glimpse of the child and her brother and sisters in the first years at Haworth. When Mrs. Gaskell wrote, there were people who well remembered the departure of Mr. Bronte and his family — die carts laden with the minister's furniture, the delicate mother and her six little children, the eldest, Maria, only seven years of age. The change, if change were helpful, was all to that mother's advantage. The house was much better situated, at a healthier altitude, and pleasantly jutting on the glorious moors. Given genuine health, Mrs. Bronte could have been happy enough at Haworth — hapiner than at Thornton. Bat physical health she had not. She and her family arrived at the vicarage somewhere in April 1820. charlottebronte

Interesting, read: bradford.gov.uk-HaworthRevised

 History: What could the Brontes had seen when they arrived?

 

hawortholdhall

 

It is interesting to note that the four earliest domestic buildings to survive in Haworth conservation area - the only ones clearly pre-dating the 18th century - are located at these 'greens'. At Hall Green there is The Old Hall itself, said to stand on earlier foundations, which is probably of late 16th-century date, as well as No.8 Fern Street, a 17th century farmhouse. At Town End there is No.26 North Street, which can be dated to the late 16th century on architectural grounds, along with Cook Gate farmhouse which formerly had recessed chamfered mullioned windows similar to those in the Fern Street building.

geograph.org.uk

 

Bridgehouse, where the original crossing of the beck was perhaps a ford. The routeway from this

crossing to Hall Green, and thence to Town End, articulated the plan of the industrial village that developed during the late 18th and 19th centuries between these earlier foci.

hallgreenchapel

Haworth was already developing as a centre for the textile industry during the late 17th and 18th centuries, when probate inventories record five pairs of looms and six pairs of combs there, but it reached its most productive period in the mid-19th century. The rise of textile crafts brought a massive increase in the density of housing between the earlier settlement foci, especially along the lane between Hall Green and Town End that became Main Street. In 1851,

 

 

Main Street was recorded as the home of over 130 people involved in woolcombing, weaving and spinning. Additional industrial housing developed in association with the opening of the first water-powered textile mill: the cotton-spinning mill at Bridgehouse, built about 1790. Further textile mills erected along Bridgehouse Beck and the river Worth, including the architecturally important Ivy Bank Mill, together with their associated housing, are outside the conservation area.

 

flickr/ ivy bank mill

 

The nonconformist denominations attracted members of the most prominent families in Haworth. Among these were the Greenwoods, owners of Bridgehouse Mill. They occupied Bridge House, a late 18th-century house next to the mill, until the 1840s when they moved out to Woodlands, a larger

house at the southern end of the conservation area; they were Baptists, and gave financial support to the movement along with the Midgleys, lords of the manor. The Greenwoods' successors at Bridgehouse Mill, R.S. Butterfield and J.R. Redman, were Methodists. archaeology/ConsHaw

britishlistedbuildings/england/bradford/haworth

 

 

And then they reached the Parsonage