Brontë Parsonage Museum

Keighley News allows us to peek inside the Brontë Parsonage Museum during the busy time that is the closed period.

Brontë Parsonage Museum is closed to the public throughout January – but it is the busiest time of the year for staff. Workers have only a few weeks to check every item in the Haworth museum and prepare new displays.They are not only creating a major temporary exhibition, but will also refresh exhibits in the permanent galleries.
The museum’s closed season, at the beginning of January each year, will last longer than usual this time, until at least February 20.
Collections manager, Ann Dinsdale, said the extra time was required due to the amount of work needed to be carried out.  She added: “We’re updating the foyer and shopping area to improve our service to visitors. “People can only come in through the front door of the Parsonage, so they’re exposed to the elements if they have to queue.
“In future, they will be able to buy a ticket at the desk in the foyer then make their way round to the front, so they can still get the experience of going through the front door.”
Museum staff were this week taking down the 2013 special exhibition, which featured Bronte household items, in readiness to install the 2013 exhibition, which explores the Brontë family’s links with animals.  Ann said: “We also have our exhibition upstairs, which tells the stories of the Brontës’ lives and how they came to write their works. We change some of the items on display each year. “There’s a huge amount of work that goes on. I think people imagine the winter is a quiet time for us, but it’s probably the busiest time. “It’s the only time of year when we can do work, such as decorating or maintenance. Everything is cleaned. We check the entire collection for any deterioration, including the furniture. We have to be very watchful for the woodwork, cracks, veneers.”
During the closed season, expert conservators examine items acquired by the Brontë Society during the previous 12 months, before they go on public display. (David Knights)

Top Withens circa 1960.

 Top Withens circa 1960. This image appears on the information board located at Top Withens. — bij Top Withens. facebook/The-Brontes

Haworth and Oakworth to feature in television series

                                                            

Haworth and Oakworth are due to feature in a television series exploring Britain’s complex, enduring relationship with the railways. The Bronte Parsonage Museum and the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway will appear in an episode of Great British Railway Journeys, presented by former Conservative politician Michael Portillo. The programme, which will include footage from Haworth and also Oakworth Railway Station, will be broadcast on BBC2 at 6.30pm on January 9.

Professor Ann Sumner, executive director of the Bronte Society, said the filming took place in May last year. She added: “I did an interview with Michael about the Brontes’ relationship with the railways, and his visit has prompted us to have a new display on this subject in 2014.
“Mr Portillo was charming, very enthusiastic and it was a pleasure to welcome him to the Parsonage on what was a beautiful, sunny day.” She said the interview examined subjects such as the Bronte sisters’ experience of travelling on what was then a novel form of transport, Branwell Bronte’s stint as a railway employee, and the role the railway played in making Haworth a tourist destination. keighleynews

 

Emily Bronte was good at investing in the stock market.
Try to get your head around the fact that the real Emily Bronte was good at investing in the stock market. Not only that, but she invested her own and her sisters' money in railway shares - the dotcom stocks equivalent of the 1840s - and managed the investment attentively. A surviving letter from supposedly more worldly Charlotte is full of praise for Emily's careful reading of the newspapers for items of railway industry news. theguardian

The British Railway Mania of the 1840s was a giant event.

At its height, individual capital- ists, in pursuit of private profit, were plowing more than twice as much into the construction of a public infrastructure as their nation was spending on the military. (It should be noted that the Pax Britannica was not cheap. Among other foreign adventures, Britain had just a few years earlier been involved in the First Opium War and the First Afghan War.) During the peak year for spending, 1847, their investments came, as a fraction of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), to the equivalent of over $1 trillion dollars for the United States today. (If we compare their expenditure to total government spending, federal, state, and local, and not to GDP, it was equivalent to over $3 trillion dollars. Taxes, which might be thought of as proportional to discretionary incomes, were far lower at that time than today.) All the funding came from individuals making private decisions to commit their funds to the new enterprise. Those investors, most new to share markets, involved such scientific and literary luminaries as Charles Darwin, Charles Babbage, John Stuart Mill, the Bronte sisters and William Makepeace Thackeray, as well as such prominent politicians (directly or through their close families) as Disraeli, Gladstone, Palmerston, and Peel. Many famous figures were involved with the Mania.

Charlotte Bronte could afford a relatively calm view of the situation, since by the time of that letter she had achieved literary success, with her novel Jane Eyre one of the best- sellers of 1847. But most railway shareholders could not, and neither could she have had a few years earlier. There was wide dismay among railway investors, who once had had high hopes for riches, and instead were faced with ruin. Although railway shares did recover from the depths reached in late 1849, they were not regarded as having properly rewarded those who bought them and made the railway system possible4.  google/Britisch railway mania

Branwell Bronte obtained employment with the Manchester and Leeds Railway

 

Initially as 'assistant clerk in charge' at Sowerby Bridge railway station,^[3] where he was paid £75 per annum (paid quarterly).^[9] Later, on 1 April 1841, he was promoted to 'clerk in charge' at Luddendenfoot railway station,^[3] where his salary increased to £130.^{[wiki/Branwell}

luddenden-foot-and-branwell-bronte
kleurrijkbrontesisters

I am always surprised, when I read how free, without male escort, the Bronte Sisters could travel by train

or by carriage through the country and abroad. I always thought it was not allowed in the Victorian period. I'll search the Internet for an answer. What was the situation in the period 1800 - 1900 when a woman wanted to travel? Part 1
/i-am-always-surprised-when-i-read-how