Snow on Top Withens.

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Top Withens

Wuthering Hikes
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Through the garden gate. — bij Top Withens

 

 

Bancrofts from Yorkshire and Top Withens

I received an e-mail from Jarlath Bancroft from the weblog

Bancrofts from Yorkshire

He told me that he posted a story about George Riley Bancroft and his farming at Top Withens

 Thank you Jarlath for sending me your story

It is so nice to learn more about Top Withens and the people who were living and working there.......

 And......it is great to know someone who is actually living in the neighbourhood of Haworth

 -------------------------

George Riley Bancroft was born on 4^th November 1911 at Intake Laithe Farm at Oldfield near Oakworth, Keighley, the home of his mother's Riley ancestors. He came from a long line of local farming stock, on both sides of his ancestry. His parents John and Mary [nee Riley], and his paternal grandparents had  farmed at Hoyle Farm near Haworth, and then moved to the nearby farm called 'Sowdens', when George was a young boy. His mother Mary Riley's family had farmed at Intake Laithe, in the nearby hamlet of Oldfield, since the 1780's.

George’s family also started breeding sheep during the 1914-18 war, and the family took on a lease from Keighley Corporation to graze their stock on the moors surrounding the 'TopWithens' farmhouse, which was made world famous because of its link to the Bronte Sisters book  'Wuthering Hights'. He remembered it as

“Good land, but t' Corporation’s policy were to let it go back …we hadn’t to repair ony walls, it was just land fo' keepin' sheep”.

When George’s father took on the lease at first, the agreement was

“ Fifty sheep, at a rent the equivalent of £7.50 a year…we may have kept a few more, but restrictions were imposed because just after t' war there 'ad been gross overstocking by some local men”


The Bancroft family originally took on leases for all three Withens farms, Top, Middle and Lower, and George remembered that the Middle and Lower Withens were demolished, but Top Withens, which even in those days was a popular tourist site with visitors, was left standing

“ for t’ Bronte fans…When I took t' tenancy of it, it were getting middlin’ dilapidated.... well it had got vandals in at it, and you can’t beat them. So I asked 'em what they wanted to do abat it…it was'nt safe, and I didn’t want to be responsible for onyone getting killed. They said they would take that property out of t’agreement, and they’d be responsible for that…but, well it’s more or less tummelled dahn now….and it 'ad bin a grand little place.”

He remembers a time 60 years ago, when Top Withens had a peat house, where the stock of winter fuel was kept and also remembers visiting the place lots of times when the last tenant, Ernest Roddy, a tall affable man lived there. Ernest had been gassed during the war, and fresh air was a necessity, so the authorities set him up at Top Withens where he was a poultry farmer, keeping hens. He had previously been a French polisher in Haworth, as well as a postman, and hawker of yeast, and every Tuesday he visited all the outlying farms selling his yeast because home bread-baking was the norm in those days. His yeast was sold for one penny an ounce and George remembered

“when he 'ad landed home after tramping miles over t'moorland, he wouldn’t be worth robbin'… He would be there for five or six years and left in 1926. He 'ad a pony and cart to go to and from Stanbury and Haworth, and kept a lot of white leghorn hens, and when he returned to Top Withens, an’ got in sight of it, those hens saw him coming and flew darn to meet him”

When asked if he’d had any bad winters up at Top Withens, he laughed and replied:

“ Aye, we had one o' two bad winters…the worst spell o' weather was in't early part of 1947. It began at t’latter end o’ January, but before then it were a reight keen frost for two or three weeks. Soon after Christmas it’d start. It started coming from over yon moortop , and when it does that, it’s north-east , you can expect summat. It niver gave ower till April. An' even in July there were t' remains ow a snow drift up aboon Ponden Kirk. It were sudden...we weren’t expecting it...not so bad. You couldn’t round your sheep up…you couldn’t get theer! There’s been loads a'snow where there’s been more snow than then, but t’north-east wind niver let up. You could see t'snow being blown ower t'fields. Down t’middle of t' field there was very little snow, but under t’walls and main road…well it were hopeless!.”

George was always fond of sheepdogs, and one of his more unusual sheepdog tales was of the time one June day when he decided to clip some sheep up at Top Withens, and went up there by horse and cart, with his dog [Ben] riding along side him. He noticed some sheep had strayed onto Haworth Moor, so spent about an hour rounding them up with Ben. When all the sheep had been clipped, he loaded the wool onto the cart, and Ben jumped on, as they made their way back to the farm at Stanbury. Ben untypically did not jump down from the cart when they got home, but just lay there. George thought “Begger you!”, left him and went in for some tea. Afterwards, the dog was still sat on the cart and George therefore knew “ summat were up…after running on t’ling for an hour, every one of his feet were red raw…chopped i’bits” ['Ling' is the name for the rough heather which grows on the moor] 

One day he left a small flock of sheep grazing at Top Withens, and lost them. "Good God where can they have gotten to"…then he saw the kitchen door at a nearby farm was open, and the sheep had gone inside. He therefore marched into the kitchen, round the large kitchen table, rounded them up and out the door with a bright “Mornin” to the speechless farmer’s wife. 
George married Hannah Whittaker, daughter of Whitley Whitaker in 1933, and they had four children, two sons and two daughters. bancroftsfromyorkshire/george-bancroft-farming-life

I found another old picture of Top Withens.

Originally known as "Top of th'Withens", Top Withens was probably built in the second half of the 16th century by George Bentley (or his relatives). At the time of the Brontës, it was inhabited by Jonas Sunderland and his wife Ann Crabtree (from 1811) and then their son, Jonas, with Mary Feather (from 1833). It was last inhabited by Ernest Roddy in 1926. locations/top-withens

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

Information panel has been placed at Top Withens:

 

Local historian Steve Wood researched the background to the building which has no direct links with the Victorian author or her works, but has been held by many to match the location of the Earnshaw dwelling in the Bronte novel.
The panel tells the story of farming high above Haworth, going back at least 400 years with the first written record of a William Bentley dividing his estate amongst his three sons.
Their tough livelihood had to be supplemented by income from other activities including quarrying and weaving. Read more: plaque-provides-history-for-walkers-visiting-top-withins-on-pennine-way
bronteblog/i-have-continued-to-enjoy-revisiting
 

The History of the Withins Farms, 1567-1930

This year's annual lecture was given not by an academic but by an enthusiastic local historian - Steve Wood. It was accompanied by a fascinating selection of slides, some of which came as a surprise for many members of the audience in the Baptist chapel, an appropriate space for events like this because it is like a compact theatre.

The subject was The History of the Withins Farms, 1567-1930 . Most Society members tramp up to Top Withins at some time, usually in good weather. Steve Wood read a few minds when he suggested that perhaps we should have made good use of the fact that the moors around Haworth and Stanbury were significantly bucolic and that the talk should have taken place on the tops, near the set of restored ruins which are possibly one of the inspirations for Wuthering Heights. But then it would have been awkward for him to show us the old
photos, and the drawings.
mark-davis-photography

 We saw a set of three farms in various states of repair - not only Top Withins, but Middle Withins and Low Withins as well. Only Top Withins remains, the other two having been demolished. Steve gave us a brief survey of the families which had once survived up there, some of them managing hay meadows and keeping cattle, some of them installing hen coops and pigsties. The animals had to come in with the human inhabitants, separated by walls and doors. We saw the careful plans which Steve had drawn. It would have been almost comfortable in winter in the bothy, near the beasts' heat. In one photo, oatcakes could be seen, draped over a beam to dry. They lived mainly on porridge and oatcakes, it seems. Even the dogs were served porridge. Read more: Bronte Parsonage.blog

"There is no life higher than the grasstops": A Walk to Withens

SylviaPlathSDrawings

From: sylviaplathinfo/there-is-no-life-higher-than-grasstops

The following is a guest blog post by Gail Crowther on visiting Haworth and Top Withens, Yorks, England. Thank you Gail!

Haworth and Top Withens feature in a number of Plath's poems, letters and journal entries along with pieces of published and unpublished prose. Most of her writing stresses the lonely and blustering nature of the place – blackened gravestones paving the ground in front of the Brontë Parsonage, withered trees, open moors of heather and sheep, a tumble-down building clinging to the moor side at Top Withens. In an account of a Withens walk published in The Christian Science Monitor on 6 June 1959 (12), Plath describes there being "as many ways to get to Withens as there are compass points" (12). Yet she had just tried two approaches – one from the town of Haworth and another across the moors from Heptonstall. Last weekend, I walked to Withens from Haworth. No dour skies or lonely howling winds accompanied us as we trecked from town to moor, but rather a blistering sun and a warm wind that took the edge off the May heat-wave. I have been to Withens twice before, both in much sterner weather more fitting for the supposed inspiration of Wuthering Heights. It is always an odd experience as I feel myself following the traces of two women writers years apart – Plath following Emily Brontë and me following Plath following Emily Brontë. Much is unchanged – the beginning of the moor spreads away from Haworth behind Penistone Hill gradually becoming browner and increasingly bare. The "grandmotherly" sheep still graze amongst grass and heather. Staring into their eyes is still like "being mailed into space." READ MORE ON THE BLOG

Top Withens, the reputed inspiration for Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, is the focus of a new exhibition at Haworth’s Parsonage Museum. Ways to the Stonehouse uses photographs and drawings to document the gradual deterioration of the former farmhouse. It includes a sketch by poet Sylvia Plath, who visited Top Withens with her husband, fellow poet Ted Hughes, in 1956. The exhibition has been created by photographer and filmmaker Simon Warner, whose own pictures are also featured.And there is photographic work produced by two community groups from Keighley while on a series of moorland walks.A Bronte Parsonage spokesman said the exhibition was part of the Haworth museum’s contemporary arts programme. And there is photographic work produced by two community groups from Keighley while on a series of moorland walks. A Bronte Parsonage spokesman said the exhibition was part of the Haworth museum’s contemporary arts programme. Keighley news

Weblogs and the Brontes: The Old School Room, Top Withens and the moors

The Old School Room at Haworth, which was built by the Rev Patrick Bronte, father of the sisters

Keighley news

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Bronte_Country

saltaire daily photo/top-withens

tuckdb.org/postcards/

tuckdb.org/postcards/

But lovelier than corn-fields all waving
In emerald, and vermeil, and gold,
Are the heights where the north-wind is raving,
And the crags where I wandered of old.

by Emily Bronte

Yorkshire pudding/emily.html

Bronte Country, 

visit-the-settings-of-great-british-literature

A windswept land of heather and wild moors, it is hardly surprising that this region became the inspiration for the classic works of the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Geographically, Bronte Country consists of the Pennine hills of West Yorkshire, as well as Kirklees and Calderdale. Unlike the postural limestone valleys of the Yorkshire Dales which begin further to the north, the geology in Bronte Country is predominantly of Millstone Grit, a dark sandstone which lends the crags and scenery here an air of bleakness and desolation. Small wonder then, that this landscape fuelled the imagination of the Bronte sisters in writing their classic novels – including ‘Wuthering Heights’ (which was reputedly inspired by the isolated moorland farmstead of Top Withens) and ‘Jane Eyre’. www.bronte-country.com

Top Withens

From: Bronte Weather

So, on Sunday I went up to Haworth and walked to Top Withins. It's a well trodden path and as it was a mild, sunny day there were lots of others walking out on the moors too. The birds are getting ready for spring. 


We could hear the eerie call of Curlew in the breeze and the crackle of Red Grouse being flushed from the heather.   

And I saw a couple of bees (a honeybee and a bumble bee). We had a butty at the Bronte Waterfalls by the Bronte Bridge and then continued up to Top Withins.


There's a plaque on the ruin that explains "This farmhouse has been associated with 'Wuthering Heights', the Earnshaw home in the Emily Bronte novel. The buildings, even when complete, bore no resemblance to the house she described, but the situation may have been in her mind when she wrote of the moorland setting of the Heights."

Top Withens

A professional photographer will chart the decay of a ruined farmhouse high on the Yorkshire hills, which is passed by thousands of walkers on the Pennine Way. Top Withens is also visited by countless tourists who make the walk to the ruins, almost 1,400ft (423m) up on the moors above Stanbury in West Yorkshire. Local photographer and videographer Simon Warner will showcase the progressive ruination of the building, said to be the location in which Emily Brontë set Wuthering Heights in her novel.“It’s a special place to so many people: ashes have been scattered there and I know of at least one person who has proposed to his girlfriend at Top Withens. “But why is it so important? Obviously it has the Brontës link; Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath both wrote poems about the site and many photographers have captured the scene over the years. But is there more to it than that? photographer--pennine-way-farm-building

Restauration of Top Withens

 Look at: bbc Restoration of 'Wuthering Heights' farmhouse

Top Withens

From: news.dalesman.co.uk

Why do the Bronte worshippers take that more-often-than-not-soggy trail up to Top Withens? It’s a question I’ve often asked myself as the place has no proven link with the family. Okay, maybe it was the inspiration behind Emily’s Wuthering Heights – we’ll never know for sure – but the old farmhouse, derelict since the 1930s, continues to attract thousands of visitors every year. A while back I overtook two inadequately dressed Japanese visitors as I walked over the moor. They asked me ‘How faah Top Rivvens?’. They were relieved and excited as I pointed to the blackened ruin on the hillside and I wondered how deflated they might be when they eventually got there. The tourism bodies are certainly never going to play down its importance and I see this week that Yorkshire Water, who own the land and property, have been repointing and blocking off more dangerous areas. The place can be atmospheric and the views are tremendous. You can feel the building bracing itself against the elements but most of all you can let your imagination run riot.

Wuthering Heights

Frannie+~Wuthering+Heights

A production of Emily Brontë's classic Wuthering Heights backed by Screen Yorkshire has scooped accolades at an international film festival.

Wuthering Heights was shot throughout North Yorkshire and supported by Screen Yorkshire, which invested in the production as well as providing crewing and locations support.

Andrea Arnold's interpretation of Wuthering Heights has won Best Cinematography at the 68th Venice International Film Festival with the Yorkshire landscape being described as "another character".

Locations that feature in the film include: Thwaite, Cotescue Park, Coverham, and Moor Close Farm, Muker, Swaledale.

Hugo Heppell, head of production at Screen Yorkshire, said: "Andrea was absolute in her desire to make the film in Yorkshire and this award shows how important it was to her vision for this unique film. We are looking forward to this film being talked about throughout the autumn."

insidermedia.yorkshire/screen-yorkshire-investment-bears-fruit 
bronteblog/still-debating-gritty-wuthering-heights
bronteblog/wutheringly-apoplectic

Top Withens in winter.

Top Withens in de winter.