Exciting times for the Old School Room

Finally, good news for the Old School Room in Haworth. English Heritage has given a £15,000 grant for restoration purposes. In Keighley News:

                                      brontespirit

The money is being provided for the grade II-listed Old School Room and will fund the replacement of windows as a first step towards repairing the rest of the property. (...)

Charity group Brontë Spirit has been campaigning to have the property restored. Currently, it is only partly used as the roof is in poor condition.
Responding to the English Heritage grant, Brontë Spirit chairman Averil Kenyon said: “We’ve progressed from a position where Haworth Parish Church had to consider selling the building as a possible building development site to one of seeing the restoration project become a reality.
“Now we’re a registered charity, have a 25-year lease on the building and have been engaged in meaningful discussions with English Heritage not only about its restoration but about creating a sustainable future for it.
“We have plans to open the building to the public from mid-July until the end of August. These are exciting times for Brontë Spirit and the Old School Room and we’re now extremely hopeful that not only will we be able to restore this wonderful building to its former glory but also to find a use that will sustain it over many years to come. (...)
An English Heritage spokesman said: “The building’s rundown appearance harms the village and the impression left on its many visitors. The grant will go towards new windows for the building’s main elevation to replace those that have been ravaged by years of harsh Pennine winter weather.
“Talks have been taking place between us and Brontë Spirit about the complete restoration and future of the building, and a development grant is being considered so a wider repair project can be moved forward.” (Miran Rahman) Bronte blog

Beautiful pictures on: the old schoolroom Haworth 

Haworth all set for full Bronte

 

Look for more beautiful pictures on these websites

 

photos of churches

Yorkshire/haworth/HaworthChurch

Soeurs Bronte

 

Charles Dickens will join the Brontes next week as the subject of Haworth’s annual weekend devoted to the famous sisters.

The Bronte Society weekend will open next Friday, June 8, with the afternoon talk, Charles Dickens and the Brontes, by Michael Slater. Mr Slater, who published an acclaimed Dickens biography in 2009, will look at the incredible impact that all the writers had on national culture.

The weekend will see writers, academics and Bronte Society members visit Haworth from all over the world.

There will be a service of remembrance at the Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels on June 9 at 11.15am, open to all. The address will be given by Haworth rector the Rev Peter Mayo-Smith, and will celebrate the bicentenary of Patrick and Maria Bronte’s wedding.

The same day at 8pm an event will explore themes of race and slavery in Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights.

The casting of a mixed-race Heathcliff in Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights put issues of race into the spotlight.

The documentary A Regular Black: The Hidden Wuthering Heights examines themes of slavery and race in the book, and uncovers parallels between the fictional Earnshaws and the slave-owning families of Yorkshire. Keighley News

Following a screening of the documentary, panellists Terry Eagleton, Bonnie Greer and Caryl Phillips will talk about some of the themes.

The evening aims to present a different reading of Wuthering Heights, and the audience will be invited to join in the debate. Tickets cost £12.

All events except for the church service will take place at the West Lane Baptist Centre in Haworth. Details and booking from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.

A First American edition of Wuthering Heights under the hammer

Sale No 1431 - Fine Books, Maps & Manuscripts
May 31 2012 10:00 - Main Floor Gallery

Lot 334
1 vol.
(Brontë, Anne.) Bell, Acton.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848.
1st American ed. 12mo, orig. dark brown cloth, spine gilt; head of spine just starting to chip, other light edge wear, 1 small blister to front joint. Scattered light foxing, faint dampstain to upper gutters of last 3rd of vol. 2pp adverts at back. Sound copy.

Estimate $500-800 Bronte blog

Haworth to Heptonstall and Hebden bridge

Interesting website:

valendale.myby/roads

Haworth to Heptonstall and Hebden bridge. This would have been a well traveled route,  Heptonstall had a Piece Hall  long before Halifax. A cloth hall was built at Heptonstall in 1545-1548 by the Waterhouse family of Shibden Hall and called Blackwell Hall after the London market of that name.  bbc.co.uk  calderdale.gov.uk  
At Marsh, Oxenhope, along Lee Lane, Bodkin Lane, Thurrish Lane, turn right onto Waste Lane, Dick Dean Lane, Baby House Hill Lane, at the staggered crossed roads where there are signs of past life, the ruin on the right looks like it was once a fine building, an 1894 map tells us it was called Nook and also known as Higher Sunny Bank, In 1853 John Greenwood (b. 1790ish Wadsworth) tenant of Savile Estate in 1853 lived here with his family. To the right we have Coppy Lane which will take you to Walshaw, or the track to the left Sunny Bank Road, taking you to Old Lane, again looking at the map we see some buildings marked called Sunny Bank, these were on the right going down Sunny Bank Road, there is a photo of what remains of Sunny Bank on Flicker, or continue straight on and drop down to Hardcastle Crags, and then on to Hebden Bridge. 

History of Cowling Hill Farm

Local legend has it that The Weavers Cottages at Cowling Hill Farm were once won in a game of cards by Patrick Branwell Bronte. It is thought that around the  time  Patrick Branwell Bronte returned from the Robinson family, won the Weavers Cottages in a game of cards.
Bancrofts from Yorkshire/hand-loom-weaving-in-yorkshire


 

Emily Brontë had a more terrific creative power than any woman we know of in literature. She was a poet, and even greater than a poet if that be possible; she was a seer of the most tremendous insight, and it was the very light of her spirit that it should be kept secret, that there could not be that free and easy relation to life which we lesser people enjoy... Rev. F. A. Bullock.

After a long struggle, justice had been done

One of the most famous incidents during Patrick's curacy at Dewsbury concerned a young man called
William Nowell of Dawgreen, Dewsbury; who had been arrested and wrongly imprisoned as a deserter of the army. Britain was at the time in the middle of the Napoleonic wars and in order to maintain a supply of soldiers, recruiting officers were sent to local fairs to offer a 'recruiting shilling' to any likely candidates.  In September 1810, a soldier named James Thackray, stated that Nowell had accepted the King's Shilling at the horse fair held at  Lee Fair, near Wakefield and had therefore been formally enlisted to the 30th Regiment.
On 25 September 1810, soldiers appeared at William Nowell's home to arrest him for failing to report at the Regimental headquarters.  Nowell pleaded that he had not attended Lee Fair and had several witnesses who could testify that he had been in Dewsbury that day.  The magistrate refused to accept the testimonies of these witnesses and committed Nowell to Wakefield Prison. The case caused an immediate outcry in Dewsbury and Patrick was one of four men who went to meet with the magistrate in Wakefield to plead for the case to be re-heard.  They were accompanied by two new witnesses who swore that they had been with the soldier James Thackray at the Lee Fair, and he had not enlisted any new recruits that day. The magistrate refused to examine the new witnesses and William Nowell remained in prison. Determined not to be beaten and to see justice being done, Patrick, together with the churchwardens and principal inhabitants of Dewsbury, wrote to the Leeds Mercury and the War Office to demand a retrial. Eventually, a hearing was arranged for 2 November 1810.  Patrick  and eminent Dewsbury men attended the hearing along with fifteen witnesses who could testify that Nowell had not been at Lee Fair on the day in question.  Following the hearing, the evidence was sent to London and five days later William Nowell was released from prison after spending ten weeks in custody. After the hearing, Patrick Brontë received the following letter from the Secretary of War,

Lord Palmerston:
WAR Office, 5th December, 1810.
Sir,
Referring to the correspondence relative to William Nowell, I am to aquaint you that I feel so strongly the injury that is likely to arise to the Service from an unfair mode of recruiting, that if by the indictment that the lad's friends are about to prefer against James Thackray they shall establish the fact of his having been guilty of perjury, I shall be ready to indemnify them for the reasonable and proper expenses which they shall bear on the occasion.                           
I am, sir, Yours, & C.,
PALMERSTON
To the Rev. P. Brontë, Dewsbury, near Leeds.

On 7 December 1811, the soldier James Thackray was found guilty of perjury at York Assizes and
sentenced to seven years transportation.  After a long struggle, justice had been done

Read on: kirklees.gov.uk/visitors/documents/patrickbronte A lot of information and pictures. 

Pining for the west

On this day in 1849

Anne Bronte died at 2 o'clock in the afternoon aged 29 at Scarborough.

 

 

A NEW plaque has been installed at Anne Bronte’s grave in Scarborough to ensure that visitors will be able to read the inscription for years to come.

Read on: scarborough evening news

Weblogs and Jane Eyre

Threads of Red

(Fritz Eichenberg, ‘A long grace was said an a hymn sung’, illustration for 1943 Random House edition, filched from Jane Eyre Illustrated which is a fascinating site)

a galli maufry

Jane Eyre and the fairy folk - "Mademoiselle is a fairy," he said, whispering mysteriously

Wuthering Expectations

Victorian Gothic

From the Royal Archives: Queen Victoria

A message from HM Queen Elizabeth II

 

In this the year of my Diamond Jubilee, I am delighted to be able to present, for the first time, the complete on-line collection of Queen Victoria's journals from the Royal Archives.

These diaries cover the period from Queen Victoria's childhood days to her Accession to the Throne, marriage to Prince Albert, and later, her Golden and Diamond Jubilees.

Thirteen volumes in Victoria's own hand survive, and the majority of the remaining volumes were transcribed after Queen Victoria's death by her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, on her mother's instructions.

It seems fitting that the subject of the first major public release of material from the Royal Archives is Queen Victoria, who was the first Monarch to celebrate a Diamond Jubilee.

It is hoped that this historic collection will make a valuable addition to the unique material already held by the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University, and will be used to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the past.

Queen Victorias journals

Magic sisters realise Chelsea Flower Show golden dream

They tried ever so hard once, and got silver. Then they tried ever so hard again, and got silver again. But this year the Yorkshire garden at Chelsea has finally achieved its ambition, and been awarded a Royal Horticultural Society gold medal.

That's what the biggest and brashest of England's counties naturally expects; (actually – interesting fact - historic Yorkshire also contains England's second-biggest county: the West Riding on its own beats Devon, Lincolnshire and other such rivals). But the organisers made the mistake of not enlisting the magical powers of the Mighty Sisters until now.

In 2010, the garden was themed on rhubarb and custard, picking up the lore and legend of the 'rhubarb-growing triangle' between Wakefield, Pontefract and Leeds. Last year, a rather architectural construction of drystone walls and the like drew on Yorkshire Artists, with references toDavid Hockney, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore.

Not to be outdone. Charlotte Bronte. Photograph: Hulton Getty

But at last, this year, Charlotte, Emily and Bronte appeared in a dream to Gary Verity, the chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire which organises the garden, and said: "Daft ha'porth. It's us you need."

So it has proved. The massive metropolitan cliché mill grinds out unswerving descriptions of the sisters and their moors as wuthering and howling, but we who live here know better. Charlotte herself wrote of Emily after her death and how:

There is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her

And Emily carolled in one of her perhaps less original poems:

May flowers are opening
And leaves unfolding free
There are bees in every blossom
And birds in every tree.

Anyway, Verity arose and his staff carried out the ghostly instructions, recreating the 'Bronte bridge' which crosses the Bronte beck by the Bronte waterfalls on the way to Top Withens (aka Wuthering Heights) above the sisters' home village of Haworth. They also crammed in a goodly stock of plants, making the composition more garden than artificial construction. Although the Brontes were not actually very good gardeners themselves, as the Guardian Northerner recently described, they would surely have approved.

Verity says:

The garden has had a non-stop stream of admirers since The Chelsea Flower Show opened but this was the ultimate goal, taking gold back to Yorkshire. This is the third time we've entered and we're delighted to be going home with a gold medal for the first time. We hope to convert thousands of well-wishers into tourists over the course of the week. 

Tracy Foster, the garden's designer from Leeds, worked closely with theBrontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth throughout the project, describes how the garden tried to source materials from nearby, including boulders from Dove Stones moor:

The stone is beautiful. We have deliberately not cleaned it so it has aged naturally and it is of the period when the girls would have been walking around the Yorkshire Moors and writing their novels. The stone still has its original lichens and mosses attached which look just perfect in the garden and really give a sense of the beauty and bleakness that epitomise the wonderful moorland landscape.

She is properly over the moon, deservedly:

My first Chelsea and I get gold, it doesn't get much better than this! I'm so proud of what we have achieved. I hope the high profile medal inspires more people to come to Yorkshire to see for themselves the landscape that brought gold to the garden.

Yorkshire garden wins Chelsea gold. Gary Verity and Tracy Foster get their gold from Nicky Chapman. Photograph: Welcome to Yorkshire

Always good at linking things, Welcome to Yorkshire has just unveiled a gardens campaign which highlights some of the best gardens to visit in Yorkshire. You can also seethree films here which the Guardian Northernerteam made last year of the progress of the Art of Yorkshire entry.

guardian/welcome-to-yorkshire-garden-chelsea-flower-show-charlotte-emily-anne-bronte-haworth

Yorkshire garden wins Chelsea gold. Gary Verity and Tracy Foster get 

“Being allowed to have my own choice of sights this time—I selected the real rather than the decorative side of Life—I have been over two prisons ancient & modern—Newgate and Pentonville—also the Bank, the Exchange ‘the Foundling Hospital,’—and to-day if all be well, I go with Dr. Forbes to see Bethlehem Hospital.”

Bedlam in 1828

Did Charlotte Brontë actually go to Bethlem? 

There is no further reference to Bethlem in any known Brontë letter, and the many biographers whose books I consulted wrote that the visit had come off without saying how they had confirmed this. In a footnote, Margaret Smith writes that on January 28, Brontë presented a copy of her new novel, Villette, to Dr. John Forbes, the physician who was supposed to take her to the hospital, inscribing it personally “in acknowledgment of kindness.”² This could be taken as confirming the visit, but I wondered if it was enough.

Forbes was a distinguished lung specialist, a friend of Brontë’s publisher George Smith and a former schoolmate of Smith’s father in Scotland. In 1849, at Smith’s suggestion, Brontë had consulted Forbes about the care of her sister, Anne Brontë, who was dying of tuberculosis. It seemed possible that the visit to Bethlem had not come off, but that Brontë wished to thank Forbes for agreeing to take her, and for his help with Anne. After all, she signed books on January 28 for several friends and acquaintances.

Read more: bethlemheritage/just-visiting-charlotte-bronte

----------------------------

Forbes, Dr John (1787–1861):

expert on consumptive diseases who was consulted by post on Anne’s consumption in 1849 and backed the advice of Dr Teale. He was a friend of George Smith’s, and extremely distinguished and in advance of his time. He made Charlotte’s acquaintance after one of Thackeray’s lectures on the English humorists, and on one of her later visits to London (Jan 1853) took her round the Bethlehem Hospital. No doubt it was on this occasion that he told Charlotte of the successful use of chloroform in operations, a remark that Patrick noted in his copy of Graham’s Modern Domestic Medicine . He was also a pioneer in the use of the stethoscope.  blackwellreference

Blogs and "the Tenant of Wildfell Hall"

nathanville/victoriana

Helen Huntingdon, the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, is a very determined, warm, passionate, brave young woman –far from the prude she is often characterized as - who refuses to be a silent victim and decides to leave her brutish, drunkard husband - thought to be based on Anne's brother, Branwell; she is not only flouting convention but even going against the laws of the land. Fleeing with her small son, she decides to lead an independent existence in a desolate, isolated countryside mansion in Yorkshire earning a living with her paintings. fly high-by-learn online

Clarissa blog

 

“I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.”

- Helen Graham/Huntingdon (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) 

Written by Anne Brontë The killing words

Booktopia 

“There was no light there but the faint red glow of the neglected fire; but I did not want a light; I only wanted to indulge my thoughts, unnoticed and undisturbed; and sitting down on a low stool before the easy-chair, I sunk my head upon its cushioned seat, and thought, and thought, until the tears gushed out again, and I wept like any child. Presently, however, the door was gently opened and someone entered the room. I trusted it was only a servant, and did not stir.”

Anne Brontë – The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
 

Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the only work by Anne Brontë to be adapted for film. In 1996 it was made into a three hour television movie. I believe it is currently out of print, which is a real shame. I have a first edition of 'Charlotte Bronte and her Circle'. The chapter on Anne is really unbelievable in the way it completely discredits her as a writer. I do not have it on hand, but the editor claims, in the introduction (it may even be the first sentence…) that it is a certainly that if it wasn't for her sisters, she and her works would be forgotten. In my humble opinion, an easy test of this claim is to imagine what we truly would have thought of her works if she had not had her sisters' works to compete with. Would they really be so uninteresting, so skilless?

Here is an interesting, although far too brief, article on the Critics of Wildfell Hall 

by Glen Downey. 

Bronteana

(Helen's view of woman's conversation) 'Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she:  'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves, or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?'

Annelle Altman

AUTHOR’S REFACE 
 

ANNE BRONTE TO THE SECOND EDITIONWhile I acknowledge the success of the present work to have been greater than I anticipated, and the praises it has elicited from a few kind critics to have been greater than it deserved, I must also admit that from some other quarters it has been censured with an asperity which I was as little prepared to expect, and which my judgment, as well as my feelings, assures me is more bitter than just.  It is scarcely the province of an author to refute the arguments of his censors and vindicate his own productions; but I may be allowed to make here a few observations with which I would have prefaced the first edition, had I foreseen the necessity of such precautions against the misapprehensions of those who would read it with a prejudiced mind or be content to judge it by a hasty glance.

 

My object in writing the following pages was not simply to amuse the Reader; neither was it to gratify my own taste, nor yet to ingratiate myself with the Press and the Public: I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.  But as the priceless treasure too frequently hides at the bottom of a well, it needs some courage to dive for it, especially as he that does so will be likely to incur more scorn and obloquy for the mud and water into which he has ventured to plunge, than thanks for the jewel he procures; as, in like manner, she who undertakes the cleansing of a careless bachelor’s apartment will be liable to more abuse for the dust she raises than commendation for the clearance she effects.  Let it not be imagined, however, that I consider myself competent to reform the errors and abuses of society, but only that I would fain contribute my humble quota towards so good an aim; and if I can gain the public ear at all, I would rather whisper a few wholesome truths therein than much soft nonsense.

As the story of ‘Agnes Grey’ was accused of extravagant over-colouring in those very parts that were carefully copied from the life, with a most scrupulous avoidance of all exaggeration, so, in the present work, I find myself censured for depicting con amore, with ‘a morbid love of the coarse, if not of the brutal,’ those scenes which, I will venture to say, have not been more painful for the most fastidious of my critics to read than they were for me to describe.  I may have gone too far; in which case I shall be careful not to trouble myself or my readers in the same way again; but when we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear.  To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is, doubtless, the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest?  Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers?  Oh, reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts—this whispering, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.

I would not be understood to suppose that the proceedings of the unhappy scapegrace, with his few profligate companions I have here introduced, are a specimen of the common practices of society—the case is an extreme one, as I trusted none would fail to perceive; but I know that such characters do exist, and if I have warned one rash youth from following in their steps, or prevented one thoughtless girl from falling into the very natural error of my heroine, the book has not been written in vain.  But, at the same time, if any honest reader shall have derived more pain than pleasure from its perusal, and have closed the last volume with a disagreeable impression on his mind, I humbly crave his pardon, for such was far from my intention; and I will endeavour to do better another time, for I love to give innocent pleasure.  Yet, be it understood, I shall not limit my ambition to this—or even to producing ‘a perfect work of art’: time and talents so spent, I should consider wasted and misapplied.  Such humble talents as God has given me I will endeavour to put to their greatest use; if I am able to amuse, I will try to benefit too; and when I feel it my duty to speak an unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I will speak it, though it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my reader’s immediate pleasure as well as my own.

One word more, and I have done.  Respecting the author’s identity, I would have it to be distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore let not his faults be attributed to them.  As to whether the name be real or fictitious, it cannot greatly signify to those who know him only by his works.  As little, I should think, can it matter whether the writer so designated is a man, or a woman, as one or two of my critics profess to have discovered.  I take the imputation in good part, as a compliment to the just delineation of my female characters; and though I am bound to attribute much of the severity of my censors to this suspicion, I make no effort to refute it, because, in my own mind, I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be.  All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anyting that would be proper and becoming for a man.

July 22nd, 1848. Read the book on: Gutenberg

 

What did the Brontes see in may during their walkes??

source: Abigails ateliers

 

May is a busy month as birds get down to the task of nest building and rearing their brood. The weather is warm but danger of frost at night can cause damage to tender plants.

What to see

Resident birds and the arrival of summer migrants such as Swallows, House Martins and Swifts are occupied with the task of building nests and rearing their young. Hawthorn also known as May hedge will be flowering in early to late May dependent on how cold spring has been.

Early in May Bluebells will be flowering in woodland. The leaves on trees will be open during the month. Butterfliessuch as the Orange Tip can be seen on grassland and theGreen Hairstreak which is usually found on heath and moorland.

Key dates:

House Martins first seen 2nd May 2005 Haworth
Swifts first seen at Haworth 15th May 2005, 2nd May 2007, 4th May 2008, 9th May 2009, 1st May 2010, 6th May 2011, 11th May 2012.
22nd May 2005 Hawthorn flowering at Haworth, 7th May 2007, 24th May 2008.Bluebells flowering at Haworth May 8th 2009.
Cuckoo heard 14th May 2005 at Ponden and 23 May 2005 at Haworth Cemetery, Penistone. Heard near Bronte waterfall on 1st May 2007. Heard Long Bridge area 20th May 2011, Heard Haworth area 10th May 2012.Cuckoo Flower, flowering 9th May 2007Cinnabar moth first seen in Cross Roads on 20th May 2007Speckled Wood butterfly seen 13th May 2009