The Crow Hill bog burst.

On 2 September 1824, the bog on Crow Hill above Haworth suddenly burst, leading to a landslide and severe flooding. Branwell, Emily & Anne Brontë, caught in the deluge while walking on the moors, were forced to shelter in a farmhouse porch. Find out more from  Principal Curator, Ann Dinsdale

Emily was inspired by the event.

..............

High Waving Heather

High waving heather, 'neath stormy blasts bending,

Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;

Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,

Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,

Man's spirit away from its drear dongeon sending,

Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.

All down the mountain sides, wild forest lending

One mighty voice to the life-giving wind;

Rivers their banks in the jubilee rending,

Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,

Wider and deeper their waters extending,

Leaving a desolate desert behind.

Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,

Changing for ever from midnight to noon;

Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,

Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,

Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,

Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.

Urgent appeal Brontë Society: help us bring a little book home to Haworth!

The Brontë Society is currently raising funds to purchase a rare ‘little book’ by Charlotte Brontë which will be auctioned in Paris in mid-November.  Please can you help us to bring it home to Haworth where it can inspire visitors and scholars for generations to come?
 bronte.org.uk

Charlotte Brontë's hair found in ring on Antiques Roadshow, say experts

The date inscription on the ring, shown with its curved lid closed. Photograph: BBC

A lock of braided hair in a ring discovered in a Welsh attic is “very likely” to have been the hair of Charlotte Brontë, according to the Brontë Society.

The ring came to light on the latest episode of the Antiques Roadshow, filmed in Erddig, north Wales. An unidentified woman said it had belonged to her late father-in-law. It has an inscription on the inside, bearing the name of the author of Jane Eyre, and the date of her death in 1855.

“I’ve got goosebumps now thinking about it. It’s got a hinge on it, and inside there’s plaited hair, I think it may be the hair of Charlotte Brontë,” the woman told the show’s jewellery expert Geoffrey Munn.

Munn said there was “very little reason to doubt” this. “It was a convention to make jewellery out of hair in the 19th century. There was a terror of not being able to remember the face and character of the person who had died,” he said. “It wasn’t an uncommon thing to happen. [The ring] opens like a little biscuit tin lid, and amazingly we see this hair work within, very finely worked and plaited hair. It echoes a bracelet Charlotte wore of her two sisters’ hair … So it’s absolutely the focus of the mid- to late 19th century and also the focus of Charlotte Brontë.”

He believed it was “utterly and completely credible” that the hair had been Brontë’s.

Ann Dinsdale, principal curator at the Brontë Society & Brontë Parsonage Museum, said they had no reason to doubt the ring had been made using the author’s hair, even though its provenance was unknown.

Dinsdale said the ring would be a “lovely addition” to the museum’s collection, funds permitting. “We already have a considerable collection of Brontë hair at the museum, and there’s usually a sample on display.”

Without the hair, Munn said he would have valued the ring at £25; with the hair and the inscription, he valued it at £20,000. theguardian/charlotte-bronte-hair-ring-antiques-roadshow-bronte-society-braid-1855

Elizabeth Gaskell's House.

Elizabeth Gaskell's House

Welcome to 84 PLymouth Grove, Manchester.  For over 150 years, this house has been associated with its most famous resident: the novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell, who lived here from 1850 to 1865. The House, now a Grade II listed property, was built between 1835-1841 on the outer edge of the growing city.  It was built as part of a new suburban development planned by Richard Lane and is a rare example of the elegant Regency-style villas once popular in Manchester. 

During the time Elizabeth lived here she wrote nearly all of her famous novels, including Cranford, Ruth, North and South and Wives and Daughters. She also wrote the biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë, plus many lively letters.

Notable visitors to the House included fellow writers Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, the American abolitionist and novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe and musician Charles Hallé. William and his two unmarried daughters, Meta and Julia, continued to live in the house after Elizabeth’s death in 1865.  

Biography: A Very Short Introduction | Hermione Lee

Iron miniature of the Duke, owned by Charlotte Bronte.

Iron miniature of the Duke, owned by Charlotte Bronte

annebronte/charlotte-bronte-london-and-the-iron-duke

Project Anne Brontë 200.

Project Anne Brontë 200 is an initiative run by a collective of musicians and poets, and headed by Pamela Nash*.  We are asking for your help to give the neglected Brontë sister centre stage and to further her legacy through the creation of new music for choirs as well as commemorative poetry in the run-up to 2020, the bicentenary of her birth.

"If Anne Brontë had lived ten years longer, she would have taken a place beside Jane Austen, perhaps even a higher place".... (novelist and poet George Moore, 1924).

 History has done a great disservice to Anne Brontë, and though she may now be stepping out from behind the veil, her contribution to literature still remains undervalued and unjustly overshadowed by her more celebrated siblings.  Until now, she has also been largely overlooked by composers, despite the striking musical affinities in her writing.   So we are appealing for you to join us in seizing the chance to address this under-representation of Anne and to shed new light on her through the powerful and magical medium of the choir, as we commission choral settings of her words - as well as specially-written poetry inspired by her.  crowdfunder/project-anne-bronte-200

Anne's grave.

Anne's grave this afternoon

facebook/ Peter Donnelly

Wedding veil Elisabeth Gaskell.

Elizabeth Gaskell's House

@GaskellsHouse

1832 Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson married William Gaskell at St John's Parish Church in Knutsford. You can see her beautiful wedding veil on display at the House!

Revival For Charlotte Brontë’s Beloved Red House.

If you’ve followed the blog anne bronte from Nick Holland for a while you may remember a post from a few years ago that included a petition to stop Kirklees council closing the historic Red House in Gomersal, West Yorkshire.

Unfortunately, whilst there was huge public support for the Red House, the council decided to close it anyway, and it’s remained unused, but not unloved, ever since.

The good news is that an enthusiastic group of people are determined that the Red House should re-open. The aim is for the council to lease the building to this community group, after which it could become an important building for Brontë and history buffs and the wider community alike. Its potential really is huge, this historically important building could be a public museum again but it could also be an arts and retreat venue, a place for literary talks and festivals, a wedding venue, as well as a perfectly beautiful host for a wide variety of community groups and events.

Stage one is to convince Kirklees council to let this group address them and present their plans for a Red House revival. Once again, there’s a petition – this time set up by the brilliant Caz Goodwill, as good a friend and advocate as the Red House could hope for. Please take just a moment to click this link to the petition and sign it. It only takes a moment, but do remember to also click the email you’ll receive to confirm your signature.

Mary Taylor

There are many reasons that the Red House is important, many of which can be found in this excellent article by Dr. Stephen Caunce which featured recently in the Huddersfield Examiner. As you’d expect, in today’s blog I’m going to concentrate on just why it’s so important to Brontë lovers. The Red House in Gomersal was for many years the home of Mary Taylor, one of a great trio of friends alongside Charlotte Brontë and Ellen Nussey. They met at Roe Head school at Mirfield, just four miles from Gomersal, the school where Anne Brontë later excelled as a pupil. Charlotte grew very close to Mary Taylor, and to her younger sister Martha, and as well as Mary’s visits to Haworth Parsonage, Charlotte visited them at the Red House. So important was the house to Charlotte that she gave it a central role in her second published novel ‘Shirley’, where it can clearly be identified as Briarmains. Here in the book is Charlotte’s moving introduction to Briarmains and the Yorke family, for which we can read the Red House and the Taylors.

“But if Briar Chapel seemed alive, so also did Briarmains, though certainly the mansion appeared to enjoy a quieter phase of existence than the temple. Some of its windows too were aglow; the lower casements opened upon the lawn; curtains concealed the interior, and partly obscured the ray of the candles which lit it, but they did not entirely muffle the sound of voice and laughter. We are privileged to enter that front door, and to penetrate to the domestic sanctum.

It is not the presence of company which makes Mr. Yorke’s habitation lively, for there is none within it save his own family, and they are assembled in that farthest room to the right, the back parlour.This is the usual sitting-room of an evening. Those windows would be seen by daylight to be of brilliantly-stained glass, purple and amber the predominant hues, glittering round a gravely-tinted medallion in the centre of each, representing the suave head of William Shakespeare, and the serene one of John Milton. Some Canadian views hung on the walls—green forest and blue water scenery—and in the midst of them blazes a night-eruption of Vesuvius; very ardently it glows, contrasted with the cool foam and azure of cataracts, and the dusky depths of woods.

The fire illuminating this room, reader, is such as, if you be a southern, you do not often see burning on the hearth of a private apartment. It is a clear, hot coal fire, heaped high in the ample chimney. Mr. Yorke will have such fires even in warm summer weather. He sits beside it with a book in his hand, a little round stand at his elbow supporting a candle; but he is not reading—he is watching his children. Opposite to him sits his lady—a personage whom I might describe minutely, but I feel no vocation to the task. I see her, though, very plainly before me—a large woman of the gravest aspect, care on her front and on her shoulders, but not overwhelming, inevitable care, rather the sort of voluntary, exemplary cloud and burden people ever carry who deem it their duty to be gloomy. Ah, well-a-day! Mrs. Yorke had that notion, and grave as Saturn she was, morning, noon, and, night; and hard things she thought if any unhappy wight—especially of the female sex—who dared in her presence to show the light of a gay heart on a sunny countenance. In her estimation, to be mirthful was to be profane, to be cheerful was to be frivolous. She drew no distinctions. Yet she was a very good wife, a very careful mother, looked after her children unceasingly, was sincerely attached to her husband; only the worst of it was, if she could have had her will, she would not have permitted him to have any friend in the world beside herself. All his relations were insupportable to her, and she kept them at arm’s length.

Read all: anne bronte

Please sign the petition.