Visit the Bronte Parsonage Museum in December

 

Visit the Bronte Parsonage Museum in December to see the house decked with its traditional decorations, and celebrate Christmas with talks, walks, workshops, carols and candlelit tours. It's a wonderfully festive time of the year to visit Haworth.

 

Saturday 6 December, 10.30 - 12.30pm

Make a festive wreath for your front door inspired by the traditional Christmas decorations at the Museum.

Tickets are £20 and booking essential, places are limited. Ticket price includes all materials, refreshments (mince pies and mulled wine) and admission to the Bronte Parsonage Museum.

Book online at http://www.bronte.org.uk/whats-on

Saturday 6 & Sunday 7 December

Visit our stall at the Haworth Christmas Market - we will be there all weekend. On Sunday 7 December, arrive at the Parsonage for 2.20pm to watch children from Haworth Primary School singing carols in the garden. A traditional carol service will follow at St Michaels and All Angels Church in Haworth at 3pm. All welcome.

These events are FREE - but please note that usual Museum admission charge will apply.

Friday 12 December, 7pm A candlelit tour of the Museum with Collections Manager Ann Dinsdale, to see the house lit by candles and dressed with its traditional decorations. This special atmospheric evening will include mince pies and mulled wine and the opportunity to ask all you have ever wanted to know about the Brontes and christmas! Tickets £15 and places are limited so booking is essential. Book online at http://www.bronte.org.uk/whats-on

Christmas at the Parsonage Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 December A festive weekend of activites for Museum visitors, including talks and walks, readings of Christmassy passages from classic literature in the rooms of the Parsonage, and drop-in craft activity to create baubles for your Christmas tree. Free with admission to the Museum Events will vary across the weekend so please ring for more details if there is something you specifically wish to take part in. All activities are drop-in. Friday 12 December, 7pm A candlelit tour of the Museum with Collections Manager Ann Dinsdale, to see the house lit by candles and dressed with its traditional decorations. This special atmospheric evening will include mince pies and mulled wine and the opportunity to ask all you have ever wanted to know about the Brontes and christmas! Tickets £15 and places are limited so booking is essential. Book online at http://www.bronte.org.uk/whats-on Christmas at the Parsonage Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 December A festive weekend of activites for Museum visitors, including talks and walks, readings of Christmassy passages from classic literature in the rooms of the Parsonage, and drop-in craft activity to create baubles for your Christmas tree. Free with admission to the Museum Events will vary across the weekend so please ring for more details if there is something you specifically wish to take part in. All activities are drop-in. from the E-news letter december bronte.org.uk

 

Haworth councillor calls for Bronte Society to forge closer ties with village following its recent internal wrangles

by David Knights

A HAWORTH politician has called on the Brontë Society to improve its links with the local community. Parish council chairman John Huxley urged the long-established literary society to forge closer ties once it had overcome its current internal problems. Complaints that the society -- which runs the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth -- had lost its way culminated in an extraordinary general meeting last month when 53 members called for a change of leadership. Cllr Huxley suspected this internal strife had affected the society’s communication with the wider community in recent months, but said the situation been “patchy” for many years. He said: “We’ve been through several directors in the past few years, and initiatives where the Society has wanted to engage with the community, but there have been several false starts. “We would like a regular communication with the Brontë Society for activities that would sustain jobs and the tourism industry. “There’s an important legacy which I feel many people in the community would like to take part in. We want to be supportive.” Cllr Huxley welcomed new moves by the Society to work closely with the community, as part of a £99,178 Arts Council England-funded contemporary arts programme.  He said: “I have met the new operations manager, but we’ll have to wait until management has settled down. “A well-coordinated Brontë Society is an important and integral part of Haworth. It would have spin-offs for the whole community if they could get themselves together. “ A spokesman for the Bronte Society this week said that discussions about several forthcoming bicentenary celebrations – funded with the Arts Council grant -- had involved society members, museum staff and representatives from Haworth. She added: “This will assist in developing and delivering an exciting and innovative programme of events and exhibitions around the bicentenaries. She said: “We are also currently in recruiting a project manager to co-ordinate the bicentenary plans, with a focus on working closely with local people, businesses and community groups as well as with the newly-appointed membership officer and the marketing and communications officer. “The leadership team at the Parsonage and the trustees are determined to renew and develop relationships with local, national and international partners to ensure that we not only continue to safeguard the legacy of the Brontë family, but add valuable new chapters and interpretations to it over the coming years.”keighleynews/Haworth_councillor_calls_for_Bronte_Society

a group from Oxenhope are trying to find the real locations behind the Brontës' work in order to make a documentary.

 Keighkey News reports that a group from Oxenhope are trying to find the real locations behind the Brontës' work in order to make a documentary.

An Oxenhope man is on a mission to track down some of the real life locations which inspired the works of the Bronte sisters. Ian Howard, who began his research in earnest 12 months ago, received a major boost when his friend Josh Chapman provided him with the memoirs of his grandmother, Joanna Hutton, who was the first female curator of the Bronte Parsonage Museum in the 1960s.
Also included amongst the memoirs was an unpublished manuscript by a woman called Dorothy Van Ghent, who died in 1968. Mr Howard, who works as a landscape gardener, said Dorothy had been trying to locate the same locations he is hunting for. "It was really nice to find out that there was someone else who wasn't sticking to the better known story of which locations the Brontes had used," he said. "It showed that my own ideas weren't just a wild goose chase! "She is very specific about the places she thought the Brontes were referring to, and she was definitely onto something."
He said Josh Chapman's brother Oliver, who like Josh and Ian also lives in Oxenhope, would be making a documentary about the project. Mr Howard said: "Josh has been looking at Google images to spot likely locations on the moors. One of the interesting things about the Brontes was how they were inspired by local legends. "Their books are very cleverly written with a lot of layers of meaning." Oliver Chapman said his grandmother, who was the last person to actually live in the parsonage, had a fascinating story to tell. "She talks about rich Americans turning up at nine or ten o'clock at night wanting a tour of the parsonage," he said. "The Brontes were her vocation, and it was a subject she spoke very passionately about." He said his grandmother had talked about souvenir hunters damaging items in the parsonage, because they were so keen to grab and make off with fragments of this historic site. He said it had been revealing to find out how much opposition there had been in his grandmother's time to the idea of a female curator of the parsonage. He noted that some of this opposition had even come from other women. "The documentary is only in its initial phases so far," he said. "We'll start with a five-minute film and see how that goes. "It'll be very interesting, not least because this is about someone whose ideas about the Brontes are so different from the official version." (Miran Rahman)