Yorkshire

Miriam Margolyes reads the Brontës

Miriam Margolyes reads the Brontës

Bronte book lovers on the web

There is also a rather lovely small press miniature book:

Charlotte Bronte and Mary Taylor: Early Feminists by Suzanne Smith Pruchnicki. Illinois, The Brontë Press, 1999

Juxta book

Eves Alexandria

isaw08/janeeyre/
 

 

Given my love for the Bronte sisters classics "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights", it was a no-brainer for me when I saw these little lovelies

Nurse fancy pants
 

 

Not to long ago I stubmbled upon this wonderful, in depth article about the Bronte Sisters and a lost (found and recently autctioned) book by Charlotte. 

Wanderlust pixie dust
 

 

Here there and everywhere

Migrants to Haworth

From John Hearfield (click) ( A period after the Bronte family was living in Haworth. But interesting to know what happened some years later. And a beautiful old picture of Haworth).

Because my oldest friend lives in Haworth, I have investigated the 19thC town in some detail, including making transcripts of the 1871, 1881 and 1891 censuses. Haworth is up on the moors above Keighley and is the West Riding mill town closest to the Yorkshire dales. Bleak and windswept, even now you can walk out of the town on to the moors, which would have given an illusion of familiarity to the migrants. The 1880s and 90s Heads of Households, often their wives, certainly their children, all worked at the many jobs which made up the textile trade, from washing, combing, carding and spinning the yarn, to weaving and finishing the fine worsted for which the town was famous.

Of the 51 Heads of Household who left Swaledale for the West Riding between 1881 and 1891, forty-four households - 323 people - came to Haworth. In 1881, the average age of those 323 people was just 16 - an awful lot of young children accompanied their parents and most of them were working in the mills by 1891.

Postmaster at Haworth

There is some confusion over which property on the Main St is the actual Post Office during the Brontes In the Trade Directory it states that between 1830-1857 William Hartley was Postmaster at Haworth, a  map of Haworth 1853 clearly shows the property in the photograph as the Post Office. 

In 1861 Edwin Feather became Postmaster, the post Office  located to another property, the Brontes were all dead by this time.

To confuse matters a book by Claude Meeker "Haworth home of the Brontes" (1895) claims a Samuel Feather as being the Postmaster. There is no known record of him as a Postmaster or living in Haworth. It has to be noted that at the time this book was published there was considerable interest in the Brontes and all sorts of claims were made. Haworth-village

Haworth

 

In the village, the old post office is now a general stationers run by Margaret Hartley, whose family have been in business in the village for more than 350 years.
 

'My great-great-great-grandad was the postmaster and served the Brontes,' says Margaret, 74. 'And this is the counter that the girls passed their manuscripts over.' 

'The girls' is how the people of Haworth refer to Anne, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, as if they were family.

Leaving behind the parsonage and the post office and heading along a steep footpath into the hills, the church bells (curate Bronte's old church, but rebuilt) and the steam engines running on the Keighley and Worth Valley railway are all I can hear.

The path is riddled with nettles - I imagine Emily's long skirts would have saved her from stings. As it winds around the hillside and narrows, the fields on the high side are replaced by rough moorland. Then slowly, the fields on the low side fade away too, and either side is no longer luxuriant green but browned, waist-high bracken, tough grass and blushing heather.

 

 

There's a single huge, upright grey stone, shaped like a throne, where Emily sat to gather her thoughts.

Google.nl/ Ponden Kirk
 

She took the natural features around her home and worked them into her novel, so every pile of stones holds a heavy meaning: the real-life Ponden Kirk became fictional Peniston Crag, where Cathy ponders her troubled life, and Ponden Hall became Thrushcross Grange, home of the Linton family that Cathy marries into, tearing her away from her true love.

Metal thieves strip lead from roof of historic church where Bronte sisters are buried

Daily Mail

The Heaton family of Ponden Hall

Ponden Hall in the 1920s

Haworth

Emily and her family were regular visitors to Ponden Hall and would walk across the moor to the Heaton family home. Branwell Brontë’s short story The Thurstons of Darkwell is based on it. The Heatons, who owned nearby Ponden Mill, also had what was reputed to be “the best library in the West Riding” and Emily certainly used it.

yorkshirepost/yorkshire-living

An influential though far from prosperous family in the Haworth area during the Brontës’ time. The large family included the elder Robert and his wife Alice, née Midgley and among their children the younger Robert (b. 1822), William, and John. The younger Robert has been linked romantically with Emily through a tenuous family tradition, and it has been noted that Hareton is an anagram of R. Heaton. The elder Robert was a church trustee at the time of the row over Patrick’s appointment to Haworth. Gerin (1971, p. 32) claims that the younger Brontës had access to the library at Ponden, but this has not been proved. During Ellen’s visit to Haworth in July 1844 she seems to record in her diary “fun and fatigue” with the Heaton family, but the entry is ambiguous. The Heatons’ fortune and position declined steadily in the later nineteenth century. blackwell reference

We know that Emily visited and read here, and scholarly studies have been made of the catalogue, working out what she might have read that could have influenced her work. It's highly likely that Anne, Charlotte and Branwell visited too, as the Heatons (together with the Taylors at the Manor House in Stanbury) were one of the foremost families in the area: for generations they acted as JPs and churchwardens at Haworth Church.

In the back garden are the withered remains of a now-dead pear tree, supposedly the gift of a lovesick teenage Heaton to an older, uninterested Emily.

There is another, important link between Wuthering Heights and Ponden Hall. In an account by William Davies (published in 1896) after a visit he made to Haworth in 1858, he tells how, after meeting Patrick Brontë ("a dignified gentleman of the old school"), he was taken on a tour of the area:
"On leaving the house we were taken across the moors to visit a waterfall which was a favourite haunt of the sisters… We then went on to an old manorial farm called 'Heaton's of Ponden', which we were told was the original model of Wuthering Heights, which indeed corresponded in some measure to the description given in Emily Brontë's romance."
wuthering-heights/locations/ponden-hal

everydaylife 

A lot of photograph's Ponden Hall

The former house of Cranford author Elizabeth Gaskell in Manchester is to be opened to the public after being awarded almost £2m for a restoration.

Gaskell moved to the villa on Plymouth Grove in 1850, three years before her novel Cranford was published. Visitors will be able to see the house as it would have looked during her time there, restored with the £1.85m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. It was damaged last year when metal thieves ripped off most of the roof. 
 

Gaskell's work enjoyed renewed popularity after Cranford was adapted for a BBC drama starring Dame Judi Dench, Dame Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon in 2007.Other novels written by Gaskell while living at the house included North and South and Wives and Daughters.

Gaskell was visited in the house by great literary figures including Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte, and the author lived there until her death in 1865. 

 

Sara Hillton, head of Heritage Lottery Fund North West, said: "This building is hugely important to Manchester - both because of its association with Elizabeth Gaskell and as a rare remaining example of a Victorian suburban villa.

The all-star TV adaptation of Cranford was a ratings hit

"Alongside the preservation of the house itself, the creation of displays and exhibitions will enhance people's understanding of the Gaskells within the context of the local area and Manchester at the time."

The Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded the grant to Manchester Historic Buildings Trust, which owns the building.

Rooms on the ground floor, including her husband William's study, the morning room and the drawing and dining rooms, still have some original fittings and are expected to be opened to the public. There will also be education and community facilities.bbc.co.uk/news

The first room we saw was the study of Elizabeth Gaskell's husband, William. This room is currently a used bookshop that helps raise money for the restoration of the house.

cuppa sunshine.blog/elizabeth-gaskell-house

Elizabeth+Gaskell

 

pink_house_to_fade_to_grey

 

1834 Poor Law Amendment Act

When Patrick Brontë opposed the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act little could he imagine that more than 170 years later his words would be so adequate for the current economical situation of his native Ireland. He wrote in 1837 to the Leeds Intelligencer.

Liberty or Bondage
To the Labourers, Mechanics, and Paupers or Slaves of England

(...) A law has lately been passed called the Poor Law Amendment Bill - a great misnomer I never read nor heard. It is a monster if iniquity, a horrid and cruel deformity, even in regard to what before was no very shapely or symmetrical representation. I know a comittee is sitting to amend the bill - but let me tell you, my dear friends, that it cannot be amended; it must be repealed altogether. (...)

We are told in the five books of Moses that the poor shall never cease from the land, and are exhorted to open our hands wide to relieve them. And the eternal God says multiply and replenish the earth. The blessed Saviour, also, follows up these injunctions with still more forcible admonitions. But a set of unfeeling, antiscriptural men, have lately arisen, who, being themselves only paupers on a larger scale, (as they are, in mnay instances supported by the country, and in a great measure, by the very men whom they wish to oppress) - who, nevertheless, teach doctrines in direct opposition to the law and to the gospel. What, then, my friends, are we to do under these circumstances? Why, verily, I see no plan better for us than that adopted by the Apostles, namely, to obey God, rather than man. (...) Then let me request you to do your duty - petition, remonstrate, and resist powerfully but legally, and God, the father and friend of the poor, will crown all your efforts with success. (Patrick Brontë to the Editor of the Leeds Intelligencer, 22 April 1837)

http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/

Patrick Bronte and Wethersfield, Hartshead and Woodhouse Grove School,

 

St Mary's, Wethersfield

 

Patrick Bronte served his first curacy in Wethersfield from 1806 to 1808. He lived in St George’s House, which still stands opposite the Church. He moved to Yorkshire where Branwell, Emily Aime and Charlotte were born.  stepneyrobarts/wethersfield-essex

The register of the parish church of St Mary Magdelene records his stay.  history detail 

Reverend Patrick Bronte (1777-1861)  was appointed curate at Wethersfield, Essex, where he was ordained a deacon of the Church of England, and ordained into the priesthood in 1807. In 1809 he became assistant curate at Wellington in Shropshire and in 1810 he published his first poem Winter Evening Thoughts in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by a collection of moral verse, Cottage Poems. 

Woodhouse Grove School

The following year (1812) he was appointed a school examiner at a Wesleyan academy, Woodhouse Grove School, near Guiseley. At Guisely Brontë met Maria Branwell (1783–1821), whom he married on 29 December 1812. wiki/John_Wesley

The first inspector at the Woodhouse Grove School was the Rev. Patrick Bronte, who examined the pupils at the end of the summer term. It is probable that the Rev. William Morgan knew that Patrick Bronte had been a successful teacher in County Down. His report on the school has never been quoted and research has failed to find it.  The Woodhouse Grove Academy, or school as it is now called, is on the north bank of the Aire, just below the bridge ; it is delightfully situated in its own grounds, and the governor's house adjoins the school. Whether Patrick Bronte had been to Woodhouse Grove Academy before he went as an examiner we are not told, but before August, 1812, was out, he was sending love letters to the Headmaster's niece, Maria Branwell daughter of Mr. Fennell's wife's brother. Evidently Mr. Bronte's warm-hearted Irish temperament would not allow him to remain a woman-hater for long. The engagement appears to have taken place in July, and the nine letters which have been published point to times of happiness and pleasure, referring to country walks to the historic spots around Apperley, to Calverley and to Kirkstall Abbey; the latter place inspired Patrick Bronte to write a poem on the old abbey. editor/target=post;post

Patrick Brontë and Mary Burder

St George's House, where Patrick Brontë met Mary Burder in 1807 A CHANCE encounter in a Wethersfield kitchen in 1807 almost changed the face of English literature. When Patrick Brontë, the poorly paid and poorly respected curate of St Mary Magdalene walked into the room in St George’s House where his landlady’s eligible young niece Mary Burder was preparing dinner he was instantly smitten. Had the course of true love run smooth perhaps the world would never have had “Jane Eyre”, “Wuthering Heights” or “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” for Patrick might never have become the father of novelists Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. As it was, the romance between the impecunious red-haired Irishman, already aged 30, who had gained his BA at St. John’s College Cambridge through hard graft and the help of some well-placed friends and the 18-year-old daughter of a prosperous local farming family, never ended in marriage. No-one is quite sure why. Not even perhaps the enamoured couple themselves.  The Congregational Chapel where Mary Burder worshipped   The Congregational Chapel on the other side of Wethersfield village green to the church could have had a lot to do with it. Mary Burder’s father had died just before Patrick’s arrival in Wethersfield and the responsibility for her widowed mother and the four children in the family had been taken by her uncle who lived not some miles away in Great Yeldham. Mary’s father had been a churchman, though he shelled out a hundred pounds to help the case of the Congregational minister when he was arraigned, wrongly it transpired, for unmentionable crimes. Her uncle’s family were, however, non-conformists and didn’t look kindly on a match with an Anglican curate. That he was an Irishman didn’t help either. Mary, was whisked off to Great Yeldham.

St Mary's, Wethersfield where Patrick was curate

In fact a marriage to Mary Burder wouldn’t have been too great for Patrick Brontë either. Preferment in the Church of England for a man with a wife who did not share his beliefs would have been difficult to obtain. At any rate Patrick decided that nursing a broken heart in Wethersfield was less attractive than a busy life at a new church in Wellington in Shropshire. He continued to write to Mary for a couple of years but by the time she was 21 and therefore free to wed without her family’s permission, Mary became embittered as the prospect of marriage faded. Somehow Patrick’s letters, and his failure to return to Wethersfield to claim her hand, had turned her love to hatred and she saw herself as a jilted woman. Patrick for his part was coping with a far greater workload than ever the tiny parish of Wethersfield had imposed upon him, and, furthermore, no letters were forthcoming from Mary or her family. He began expressing his admiration of those ministers who could serve God without the distraction of unrequited earthly love. He admitted it was not easy for him but he doesn’t seem to have realised that Mary, too, might have found it hard to understand the situation. Eventually the matter was resolved by Patrick’s meeting, in his new Yorkshire parish of Hartshead, 29-year-old Maria Branwell the petite, though not particularly pretty, daughter of a prosperous Penzance grocer who had gone north to help in her aunt and uncle’s boarding school. Patrick and Maria were married in 1812 and over the next few years five girls and one boy were born to the couple. It was not to be a long marriage. Less than 10 years after the wedding Maria was found to have cancer; her death at 38 after a few months illness left Patrick with six small children aged between two and seven. 

He was in a sad predicament. Although he was now in a permanent benefice at Haworth on the Yorkshire moors he was not well off and no catch for a genteel woman of that period. He proposed to the godmother of some of his children but was brusquely turned down. His wife’s sister had been a tower of strength during his wife’s illness but there was no hope there – in those days marriage to the sister of a deceased wife was not permitted. A further proposal to a

friend’s sister was also rejected.

In desperation Patrick remembered Mary Burder. Was she married? Was there hope of a reconciliation? He wrote to Mary’s mother and received a reply from Mary herself. Yes, she was still single but she wanted nothing to do with a 47-year-old with a family of six to look after. She declined his suggestion of a meeting in Wethersfield.
Patrick, still hopeful, wrote again but there was no reply.

The Manse at Wethersfield where Mary went to live.
 

And Mary? A year or two later she married the minister at Wethersfield Congregational Church, Rev Peter Sibree who declared that in marrying her “he had found that blessing of which I can never sufficiently appreciate the importance – a prudent wife, which is from the Lord.”  They lived in the Manse by the chapel. Wethersfield/lovepages

On this day in 1850 Charlotte Bronte met the Duke of Wellington at the Chapel Royal London.

 

 Image: Daguerreotype of the Duke of Wellington in 1844 the quack doctor

Charlotte had a big admiration of Wellington. Her fictional characters Charles and Arthur Wellesley feature prominently in her early Angrian writings. In Brussels she wrote an essay on ‘The Death of Napoleon’, in which she praises Wellington, making his genius superior to Napoleon’s. Throughout her life she would follow her hero's progress, finally seeing him in the flesh when she visited London in 1850. 

Kleurrijk Bronte Sisters

Arthur_Wellesley,_1st_Duke_of_Wellington

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.