Brontë Parsonage Museum

Location: Church St, Haworth, Keighley BD22 8DR
Opening times: Wednesday to Monday, 10.00am – 5.00pm (last entry 4.00pm)
Entry: Standard £13.00, concession 65+ £11.00, general concession (students, local residents, disabled, etc) £8.00, teen ticket (12 – 16) £6.50, child (11 and under, as part of a family group) free.
Access: Adjacent car park

The Brontë Parsonage Museum houses the largest collection of Brontë related items in the world, and quite right too. The building may not be where the celebrated trio of literary sisters were born – that’s in nearby Thornton – but it was the cradle of their genius, where Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë crafted the novels that became literary landmarks.

Let’s just pause on the improbability of that last sentence. A draughty nineteenth century Yorkshire parsonage on the edge of an industrial, disease-ridden village surrounded by bleak, hostile moorland produced not just one, or two, but three novelists whose work transcended that place and time to become lasting beacons of English literature. Truly astonishing. What are the chances?

Haworth and the Parsonage had been on my bucket list for some time, but it wasn’t until August 2020, when this photo was taken, that I got around to ticking that particular box. Well, nearly. This was at the height of the Covid pandemic, and even although the first lockdown restrictions had been lifted *the Parsonage remained closed, and, given how confined the space is, rightly so. Anyway, it’s now five years later and the box is finally ticked.*

For the record, the Brontë sisters’ publishing career began with the collective Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846). As novelists, Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), and Villette (1853). Anne wrote two novels, Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), and while Emily penned just the one, Wuthering Heights (1847) is arguably the best-known thanks to its countless screen adaptations. There is also the small matter of Kate Bush’s 1978 single ‘Wuthering Heights’, which I suspect was the gateway to the Brontës for many. It was certainly mine.

Apart from the quality of the work, the other thing that always amazes me is how quickly these novels were produced. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published a mere six months after Agnes Grey, for example, making the two years that separate Jane Eyre from Shirley seem like a yawning chasm until one considers that between the two Charlotte was dealing with the deaths of Emily, Anne, and her brother Branwell.

*Another Covid-era photo. Incidentally, in naming the novels above I have omitted Charlotte’s* The Professor. This was her earliest manuscript *and it received multiple rejections, so Charlotte tried her luck with* Jane Eyre instead. The Professor was published two years after her death in 1855 by her widower Arthur Bell Nicholls. This might have been a cynical cash-grab on the part of the publishers, but the same accusation cannot be levelled at Nicholls, who spent the rest of his life keeping defiantly schtoom about life with a Brontë. *Cashing in was clearly not on his agenda.*

The Brontë Parsonage Museum exists as it does today thanks to the Yorkshire industrialist Sir James Roberts and the Brontë Society. Following the Reverend Patrick Brontë’s death in 1861, the contents of the Parsonage were auctioned off and many items of what became known as Brontëana were taken by Arthur Bell Nicholls when he returned to his native Ireland. The sisters’ fame was such that friends, acquaintances, and servants made a few bob selling off keepsakes and letters associated with them. The Brontë Society was formed in 1893 to track down this dispersed Brontëana and to find a permanent home for it. That eventually came in the shape of the Parsonage itself, which was bought by Sir James Roberts and gifted to the Society in 1928. Rather pleasingly, as a boy Roberts had attended the school Patrick Brontë established in Haworth.

Here is the school on the right, with the Parsonage on the left. The blue plaque above the school door reads, “Patrick Brontë (1777 – 1861) built this school for the children of Haworth. Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne all taught here. Site of Charlotte’s wedding reception in 1854”.

*The dining room, where* Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Agnes Grey, and others were written. It is believed Emily died on the couch in this room. The painting above the fireplace is a reproduction of George Richmond’s portrait of Charlotte, while the plaster portrait above the couch is of Branwell.

*Patrick Brontë’s* *study*. That’s the minister’s magnifying glass on the table, and he bought the piano which, the information board tells us, “was mainly played by Emily and Anne”. Were Charlotte and Branwell unmusical?

Two paintings by Branwell Brontë’. On the left is a reproduction the famous ‘Pillar Portrait’ done when Branwell was about 16 or 17 and his sisters were also in their teens. It depicts, from left to right, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte. It is believed that Branwell originally included himself in the group, but then replaced himself with the pillar that gives this portrait its name. However, his outline can still be clearly seen. The original hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. The portrait on the right is an original, and is of Emily. This is the only surviving fragment of another group portrait by Branwell known as ‘the Gun Group’, so named because Branwell has painted himself holding a shotgun. Arthur Bell Nicholls destroyed all bar Emily, claiming that was the only one of the four siblings to show a true likeness. Both originals were found on top of a cupboard by Nicholls’ second wife shortly after his death in 1906. The ‘Pillar Portrait’ had been folded, thus the creases.

As well as the preserved house the Parsonage also contains an excellent exhibition detailing the lives and works of the Brontës, and displaying a wealth of Brontëana. Here’s Charlotte’s spectacles and a first Latvian edition of Wuthering Heights.

*The Brontë* *Sisters (1951) by Jocelyn Horner, in the Parsonage grounds.*

*The memorial to the Brontë*s at St. Michael and All Angels Church, where Patrick Brontë was minister. As can be seen by the above dates, his wife and six children all predeceased him, including the two ‘forgotten’ sisters Maria and Elizabeth, who both died before reaching their teens. They are all buried in a vault below this spot, save for Anne who died in Scarborough, having gone there in the hope the sea air would relieve her tuberculosis. Charlotte decided to “lay the flower where it had fallen” and had Anne buried at St. Mary’s churchyard, possibly to spare her father the anguish of burying another child so soon after having lain Branwell and Emily in the ground.

*Haworth today is quaint and quirky, full of pubs, eateries, and interesting little shops*. In the Brontës’ time it was a hellhole. The average life expectancy was 26 years, and 41% of the population died before the age of six. In 1850, shortly after he had lost Branwell, Emily and Anne, Patrick Brontë invited the scientist and engineer Benjamin Herschel Babbage to investigate the town’s high mortality rate, and what Babbage found shocked him. In short, rain water would fall on the top of the hill where many of the natural springs that supplied the town with its water were located. Also located there was a badly planned and overcrowded graveyard, and dotted around the town were far too few privies to cope with the population. The springs would run through the graveyard and the privy cesspits, carrying body and faecal matter to the public water pumps. The Black Bull pub, a favourite of Branwell’s and still there today, would even brew its beer from this deeply contaminated water supply. I hasten to add I had several pints of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord while there, and it went down a treat.

Destination or Diversion?

By its very nature the Brontë Parsonage Museum will have a bit of a niche market, presumably being visited only by those with at least a passing interest in the Brontës. For those visitors, a wander around the house, the exhibition, the shop, the gardens, and the associated sites of the Old School Room and St. Michael’s Church, will easily take a couple of hours, so that makes this a destination. Add in the town itself and perhaps a Brontë inspired walk on the moors and you have a full day out.

Destination or Diversion?

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply