Short-sighted Decision Makers

 

Bronte birthplace, Thornton Village

In Market Street is the birthplace of the Bronte sisters (and their wayward brother). The datestone above the door reads 'A J S 1802'.

geograph.org.uk

 

 (FROM): Bronte blog has received the following article from last night's Telegraph and Argus from the Brontë Birthplace Trust chairman, Steve Stanworth. It's appalling.

A Bradford councillor broke down in tears as she tried to respond to the news that Bradford Council has declined to save the Thornton birthplace of the Brontës.
Thornton& Allerton Conservative Councillor Valerie Binney wrote the original letter appealing to the Council for financial support to help Brontë Birthplace Trust buy the property and preserve it as part of Bradford's cultural heritage.
"I felt extreme disappointment.I could have cried. We worked so hard," she said and then did, briefly, break down in tears.
The Council said if it had made an offer for the doublefronted house in Market Street it might have jeopardised the Trust's bid for £239,000 of lottery cash.
Steve Stanworth, chairman of the Brontë Birthplace Trust said: "I received a phone call from Sheilagh O'Neill from the Council's regeneration department. The official line is they cannot justify lending or giving us the money for the Brontë Birthplace. This is due to a political decision.
"They say the property wouldn't be of interest to them and they don't believe it could be a going concern. I am extremely disappointed and frustrated, when we see the amount of wasted money on speed bumps, cycle races and events that are fleeting.
"This sums up the Council's attitude and goes against the Big Society the Government is trying to foster. We are now left in a bad position once again."
Coun Binney said: "The tourism department doesn't think a Brontë museum in Thornton is viable because everybody goes to Haworth. People we meet seem to think the Brontë sisters were born in Haworth.
"If I had the money I would buy the house myself. Somebody wants to buy it to turn it into a bistro. It used to be a restaurant and that didn't work."
The decision was taken by three executive committee members of the council: Council leader David Green, Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe and Councillor Andrew Thornton.
Coun Thornton, who holds the portfolio for environment, sport and sustainability, said: "We explored a number of ways in which we might offer assistance for the Brontë Birthplace Trust to make an offer for the property.
"However, as the Council has no interest in acquiring the building for itself we were not satisfied that this was a justifiable use of public money or a reasonable intervention for us to make in competition with any private individual seeking to purchase the property.
"Government cuts to the Council's budget together with a national and local contraction in public grant aid continues to put severe pressure on our existing cultural estate. Adding to those pressures with an open ended commitment to an unquantified scheme cannot be justified.
"We will continue to offer support to the Brontë Birthplace Trust as it pursues its Heritage Lottery Fund bid for its project."
The Trust, which meets tomorrow at the Blue Boar pub in Thornton, near St James's Church, at 7pm, will have to think again.
Mr Stanworth said: "Perhaps our best bet is to try to fast-track our Heritage Lottery Fund bid. This usually takes six months. "If we do get someone to buy the property, we have to be careful how this affects the funding status. I was hoping to bring good news to the meeting, but this puts a different light on it. We are back at square one." (Jim Greenhalf)

Steve asks readers to 'please feel free to vent your displeasure via the link to the letters page of the Telegraph and Argus'. And rightly so. We expect letters to the council, etc., would also be welcome. A pat on the back to these short-sighted decision-makers. Hopefully the members of the Trust will come up with something that allows them to save the birthplace.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE TIME OF THE BRONTES IN THIS HOUSE?: 

Although, according to Miss Firth's diary, Mrs. Bronte 
appears to have had some social enjoyment and exchanged 
visits with her neighbours, in company with her husband and 
her sister, Miss Elizabeth Branwell, she must have had a very 
busy life with her young family. Her second child was only 
a few months old when she went to Thornton, and before she 
left, five years afterwards, the family had increased to six. 
There was not a room in the house that could well be spared 
for a nursery. Miss Branwell, who was with Mrs. Bronte 
when Charlotte was born, and for some months afterwards, 
needed accommodation, and, with the general servant and 
nursemaid, there was a household of eleven in this little 
parsonage. Mrs. Bronte must have been a very capable 
manager for her husband to be able to say that his happiest
days were spent at Thornton. 

It was during his stay here that he published a small volume

The Cottage in the Wood, 
or the Art of becoming rich and happy and he has also been 
credited with a story which formed another volume The 
Maid of Killarney, or Albion and Flora, a tale, in which are 
interwoven some cursory remarks on religion and politics. 
No author's name is attached to the book. Altogether Patrick 
Bronte could now claim to be the writer of four small volumes ; 
they were, however, such that literature would not have been 
much the poorer if he had never published them, but they 
show evidence of a thoughtful mind, and if too didactic they 
are artless and sincere. In a small house filled with children, 
with a husband busy with writing and preparing sermons, 
Mrs. Bronte's task must have been by no means an easy one. 
It is noticeable that Mr. Bronte did not publish any 
poems after he lived at Thornton ; the muse from this point 
appears to have left him. 

The old servants of the Thornton Vicarage Nancy and 
Sarah Garrs had nothing but kind remembrances of Mr. and 
Mrs. Bronte. Shortly after the family went to reside at 
Thornton, Mrs. Bronte felt it necessary to engage a second 
servant, and Mr. Bronte applied to the Bradford School of 
Industry. It was thus that Nancy Garrs became nurse in 
the Bronte family, and she was with Mrs. Bronte when Charlotte 
Emily Jane, Patrick Branwell, and Anne were born. 

Nancy Garrs married a Patrick Wainwright, and the old 
nurse was proud in after years to tell how Patrick Bronte 
entered the kitchen one day at Haworth, saying : " Nancy 
is it true, what I have heard, that you are going to marry a 
Pat?"" It is," replied Nancy,"and if he prove but a tenth 
part as kind a husband to me as you have been to Mrs. Bronte, 
I shall think myself very happy in having made a Pat my 
choice." 

In the footsteps of the Brontes. 

you 
can read more of this period 

Patrick Bronte called

" My happiest days were spent there." 

The Lion, The Spectacles and the Bracelet

 

What can three simple objects tell us about the Brontës? Education Officer Sue Newby shows three very different objects from the Brontë collection, then leads a short walk to the churchyard, to discover a little about life and death in Haworth in the Brontës' day. Read more on: the-lion-the-spectacles-and-the-bracelet

Bronte heritage put before green energy in key wind turbine ruling

 

These turbines at Ovenden Moor Wind Farm in Yorkshire are due to be replaced by ones twice the height of Nelson's Column Photo: ALAMY

 

The brooding West Yorkshire countryside that inspired classics such as Wuthering Heights has been protected from plans for more turbines because of the importance of the famous sister writers.

It is believed to be the first time the literary significance of an area has been put before the need for green energy.

It comes as the High Court will this week hear a separate case brought by leading heritage groups hoping to protect historic sites from wind farm development.

Bradford Council has rejected plans for a 15m turbine at Hardnaze Farm, Oxenhope, Keighley, less than two miles from Haworth, where Emily, Charlotte and Anne Bronte grew up.

Councillors ruled the scheme would do little to boost renewable energy – while creating a blot on Bronte Country. Read more on: .telegraph/Bronte-heritage-put-before-green-energy-in-key-wind-turbine-ruling  /Moors-inspired-Wuthering-Heights-saved-wind-turbines-planners-consideration-literary-significance-area

On this day in 1855 Tabitha Aykroyd "Tabby" faithful servant of the Bronte family died aged 85.

Almost nothing is known of Tabitha's life before she entered the Parsonage in 1824 aged 53. She was almost certainly a native of Haworth, and we know of two sisters; Rose, who married a Bingley man called Bower, and Susannah, who married a Haworth man called Wood. Tabitha never married, and while there is no record of her life before she entered the Parsonage, it is thought that she had worked in domestic service and on farms.

Living at the Parsonage 'Tabby' was the Cook/Housekeeper and for the first 15 of her 31 years at the Parsonage, she was the only servant living in, although the Brontë sisters themselves also cooked, cleaned and washed clothes. In December 1836 Tabby slipped on ice in Haworth's main street, badly breaking her leg. Aunt Branwell suggested that she leave the Parsonage to be nursed by her sister Susannah, but the Brontë children objected, even going on hunger strike, and Tabby stayed in the Parsonage nursed by the children. The leg never fully healed however, and over the next 3 years many of Tabby's duties were taken up by Emily.

In 1839 Tabby seems to have retired temporarily, moving into a house in Newell Hill that she had bought with her now-widowed sister Susannah. Mr. Brontë engaged Martha Brown, the 11 year old daughter of his Sexton, John Brown, but the greater part of the skilled and the heavy work fell upon the Brontë girls, with Emily becoming Housekeeper. In 1842, Tabby moved back into the Parsonage where she stayed, sharing the little servants' bedroom with young Martha, for the next 13 years. Tabby died in February 1855 and she is buried with her sister Susannah, and a George Aykroyd who may be a brother, just over the wall from the Parsonage garden.

Personality; Influence According to Mrs. Gaskell, Tabby "abounded in strong practical sense and shrewdness. Her words were far from flattery; but she would spare no deeds in the cause of those whom she kindly regarded"(The Life of Charlotte Brontë 1857). Mrs. Brontë had been dead for 3 years when Tabby came to the Parsonage and the children were looked after by their mother's sister, Elizabeth Branwell. A year after Tabby's arrival, the two eldest children, Maria and Elizabeth, died of consumption. Charlotte and Emily were only nine and seven years old at the time, and as they at least had only a formal relationship with their Aunt Branwell, they found physical and emotional warmth in the kitchen. Tabby was fond of her "childers" and they were fond of her. As Charlotte later wrote, "she was like one of our own family". Tabby took the girls for their walks on the moors, and, with her old-fashioned ways and broad Haworth accent, she was sometimes the butt of their boisterous games.

Tabby was a great storyteller. She knew all the local families, all their complex inter-relationships and disputes, and, despite her belief in the Christian teachings of divine reward and retribution, she held also to the ancient anthropomorphic traditions of the countryside, claiming (according to Mrs. Gaskell) to have known people who had seen the fairies. Emily, who spent more time working in the kitchen than either of her sisters, was particularly close to Tabby, and Tabby's influence permeates the landscape of Wuthering Heights. Tabby has also been identified as the model for Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights, and for the housekeeper Martha in Charlotte's novel Shirley.
bronteparsonage/tabitha-aykroyd

Ellen “Nelly” Dean

Ellen, or Nelly Dean, is the housekeeper of Thrushcross Grange as the novel begins and is the servant of both Catherines. Intelligent and compassionate, she is often more of a friend or relative to the characters in the book than a servant. Consequently, she knows more of the story than anyone else so is able to fill Mr Lockwood in on events.
wuthering-heights.

Quotes

(Childhood) … I was almost always at Wuthering Heights; because my mother had nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw … and I got used to playing with the children: I ran errands too, and helped to make hay, and hung about the farm ready for anything that anybody would set me to.

(1801, aged 43) At this diabolical violence I [Ellen] rushed on him furiously. 'You villain!' I began to cry, 'you villain!' A touch on the chest silenced me: I am stout, and soon put out of breath; and, what with that and the rage, I staggered dizzily back and felt ready to suffocate, or to burst a blood-vessel.

(1801, aged 44) ' … you [Ellen], my good friend, are a striking evidence against that assertion. Excepting a few provincialisms of slight consequence, you have no marks of the manners which I am habituated to consider as peculiar to your class. I am sure you have thought a great deal more than the generality of servants think. You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties for want of occasions for frittering your life away in silly trifles.'

' … but I [said Ellen] have undergone sharp discipline, which has taught me wisdom; and then, I have read more than you would fancy, Mr. Lockwood. You could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into, and got something out of also … '’

 

Sarah Lancashire who plays Nelly Dean

Sarah, 44, describes Nelly as the go-between for Cathy and Heathcliff. “She feels terribly protective of them. What we don’t see in our adaptation, but is written in the book, is that Nelly grew up with Cathy. It was Nelly’s mother who was in service at Wuthering Heights, so the two of them almost have a sibling relationship separated by their status.
“Nelly also raised Heathcliff so she has maternal feelings towards them both. Nelly’s life is undoubtedly Cathy, because she herself has never married or had children of her own. She’s very much a woman in service bound to the family.”
Despite her role as carer, Sarah says Nelly is helpless when it comes to Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship.
“I don’t think Nelly has any influence or control over how they feel for each other,” she says. “Brutally bound by her status in life, Nelly is incapable of intervening to prevent their relationship. All she can do is stand back from it all.”
Wuthering Heights was filmed last year in areas of West Yorkshire, on vast areas of moorland and stone-built manor houses including East Riddlesden Hall, near Keighley, and Oakwell Hall at Birstall. Did the rugged Yorkshire landscape help Sarah identify with the story?
bronteblog/wuthering-heights

 

Elizabeth Gaskell's Manchester home to get £2.5m restoration

Heritage Lottery Fund grant will help restore villa where Cranford and North & South were written back to its Victorian splendour.
The Manchester home of Elizabeth Gaskell, the Victorian novelist and short story writer, is to be restored thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £1.85m. The house, which dates from the 1830s, had stood empty for several years and was on English Heritage's register of buildings at risk.

Although little original furniture belonging to the Gaskells remains, the Gaskell Society has carried out extensive research into what the family owned, and will be filling the house with appropriate Victorian pieces, and authentic wallpaper and decorations. As well as being open to the public, the building will also be used for concerts, and available for corporate hospitality to help pay for the running costs.

The house was occupied by the Gaskell family from 1850 until the death of Meta Gaskell, Elizabeth's second daughter, in 1913.

 

 

In 1850, in a letter to her friend Eliza Fox, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote:

We've got a house. Yes! We really have. And if I had neither conscience nor prudence I should be delighted, for it certainly is a beauty... You must come and see us in it, dearest Tottie, and make me see 'the wrong the better cause' and that it is right to spend so much ourselves on so purely a selfish thing as a house is, while so many are wanting.

The house's seven bedrooms may have explained the relatively high rent of £150 a year – at the time her husband William Gaskell's income as a priest was £300 a year. Elizabeth joked that the expense of the house would bankrupt them:

My dear! It's £150 a year, and I dare say we shall be ruined; and I've already asked after the ventilation of the new Borough Gaol. . guardian/elizabeth-gaskell-manchester-house-restored

Valentine Day

 

I wrote to the facebook page of the Bronte Parsonage museum and asked about photographes of the new decorated Museum. The answer is: ""We're having some new pix shot shortly, then they'll be going up"". I really am surprised that there is not a big marketing campaign, with beautiful photo- and video material of the new situation. The re-opening was such a good moment to show ""the world"" what is going on.  

Because I don't have new material  I use a photograph of the old situation. I was looking for some Valentine material and came across this page:

 

Above is the room in Haworth Parsonage where the Bronte sisters lived and wrote. Friend of Charlotte Bronte and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, described the room as “…the perfection of warmth, snugness and comfort, crimson predominating in the furniture.” With Valentine’s Day fast approaching I could think nothing more appropriate than to take inspiration from the room where Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Villette and other love stories were penned, cozy and crimson by the fire.

 

Look on this page for more CRIMSON colours, the colour Charlotte loved so much: Decorwrite.

 

The beautiful story of William Weightman and his Valentine Card.

In Feb 1840, about six months after his arrival, Ellen Nussey came to the Parsonage for a three weeks stay. Neither she, nor the Brontë girls had ever received a Valentine card; so it caused quite a stir on the morning of February 14th. when they each received one. Of course, the culprit was the scheming Weightman. In his usual mode of conduct, he had made a bold attempt to add a little sparkle to the girls' lives, and in a vain attempt to disguise his handiwork, had walked the ten miles to Bradford to post them.

He had written verses in each of the Valentines; however, only the titles of three of them are known, but these give a general idea of their content:

 

'Fair Ellen, Fair Ellen', 'Away fond Love' and 'Soul divine'

 

The girls were not to be fooled by the Bradford post-mark, and soon realised that the chirpy curate was the guilty party.

mick-armitage/weightmn

 

'I have stings of Conscience, visitings of remorse, glimpses of holy

There's an article in the 'Antiques Trade Gazette' dated Feb 3 which describes the six letters recently discovered tipped into a first edition of Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Life of Charlotte Bronte' as 'the best Bronte lot of the year'. The same ...lot we were hugely privileged to be able to win at auction, with help from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
Written to her friend Ellen Nussey during a time of terrible stress in Charlotte's life while utterly miserable and working at Roe Head School, they describe how she tried so hard to find a little comfort in her life by turning to God, of inexpressible things which formerly I used to be a stranger to - it may all die away and I may be in utter midnight but I implore a merciful Redeemer that if this be the real dawn of the Gospel it may still brighten to perfect day.'
We are delighted to report the letters are now on display in the the corner case of Charlotte's room. If you can, come and see them! facebook/Bronte-Parsonage-Museum

The Quartier Isabelle in 1843

 

Video and picture.

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/features/video-inside-the-restored-bronte-museum-1-5401823

Blue

twitter.com/BronteParsonage

Clothes and accessories

 

Still no pictures of the newly decorated Parsonage. But I found this picture of the old situation.

Clothes and accessories worn by Charlotte Bronte on display in her old bedroom at the Bronte Parsonage Museum  /Bronte+Museum+Former+Home+Famed+Bronte+Sisters/

 

“I had green eyes, reader.”

What makes a gothic fairy tale about a plain governess so raw and exhilarating?

FAVOURITE TRICK Addressing us individually, as in “Reader, I married him.” It puts us on intimate terms, but also allows for some sly asides. When Mr Rochester, besotted, compliments Jane on her “radiant hazel eyes”, she deadpans, “I had green eyes, reader.”
Read more: charlotte-brontes-silent-revolt

"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

Emily Bronte's chemise, Anne's songbook

 

One of Emily Bronte's chemises
 

In my search to pictures of the newly decorated Parsonage

I came across the name of Sarah May Laycock
Library and Collections Officer of the Parsonage Museum
When I ""googled"" her I saw these pictures
thetelegraphandargus/.bronte_museum_opens_new_show/

 

 Library and collections officer Sarah Laycock holds Anne Bronte’s songbook from the Bronte Relics exhibition

thetelegraphandargus/Brontes-rarities_go_on_show-

Mr Brontë's Study has been distempered in plain white, because no evidence could be found that it was ever papered

 

Ann Dinsdale, acting director of the Bronte Society, in Patrick Bronte's study at the Parsonage Museum

Old situation

 

This is the only picture I can find of the new situation till now

I keep on searching

I am a little suprised that the walls are painted white because I always believed the walls were dove coloured.

 

Ellen Nussey, visiting Haworth for the first time some twenty years earlier, also found the Parsonage scrupulously clean but considerably more austere.

'There was not much carpet any where except in the Sitting room, and on the centre of the study floor. The hall floor and stairs were done with sand stone, always beautifully clean as everything about the house was, the walls were not papered but coloured in a pretty dove-coloured tint, hair-seated chairs and mahogany tables, book-shelves in the Study but not many of these elsewhere. Scant and bare indeed many will say, yet it was not a scantness that made itself felt . . .'