My husband Paul and I headed again to Haworth last month for our annual visit and participation in the June weekend of events organised by the U.K. Brontë group. Our friend Joanne Wilcock, an active volunteer at the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton, suggested a few Brontë-related locations “in the neighbourhood.”
Some of the places that she suggested we had already visited, but there were still some that we had not seen yet. She saw potential and was eager for us to tick some of the boxes of Brontë-related places that we had not been to.
So, she invited us for a day out in Brontë Country and she offered to be our guide and driver. That was indeed a very unexpected treat for us. Paul could relax in the back of the car and I was in the front listening to all the information that Joanne (a real fountain of Brontë knowledge) was giving us on the places we were about to visit.
I knew about these places from photos and especially from one of my favourite Brontë books called “Brontë Places & Poems” by G.R. and C.E. Taylor, which I read during the Covid pandemic (and which I reviewed on the Brussels Brontë blog in 2020.
The first stop was Cowan Bridge in Lancashire (near Kirkby Lonsdale) and the Clergy Daughters’ school founded by the Reverend William Carus Wilson. Patrick Brontë was looking for a school for his daughters that he could afford and this school was apparently the answer. He sent four of his daughters to the Cowan Bridge school in 1824 and 1825. First Maria and Elizabeth attended, and later on Charlotte and Emily joined them.
This was to be a disastrous experience for all the girls. The two eldest came home with signs of consumption and died in 1825. Due to the epidemic in the school, Charlotte and Emily were taken to Silverdale, the summer home of Carus Wilson, where Patrick fetched them and brought them home. The experience was very traumatic, especially for Charlotte. She used this experience in her novel Jane Eyre. We are all familiar with the story as this school was the model for Lowood school.
I was surprised that Cowan Bridge was such a distance away from Haworth. I had not realised this before. Joanne showed us all there was to see there, the old bridge and the old school with the commemorative Brontë plaque. Part of the original building was still there, although no longer a school. The original school building was now transformed into three separate cottages in private ownership, one of which was used for rental tourist accommodation. She also showed us the nature trail along the nearby river which the girls would have used. Tick ✅
We then went to St. Peter’s Church and graveyard in Leck. This was the nearest church to Cowan Bridge school, but due to building works in the church in 1824-1825, the Cowan Bridge school pupils had to walk to Tunstall Church for their Sunday services. However, in the graveyard Joanne showed us the “fever” graves where three pupils of the Clergy Daughters’ school are buried: Sarah Bicker (died 29 September 1826), Mary Tate (died 14 August 1829) and Emma Tinsley (died 6 June 1831). Sarah Bicker was the only one who was a pupil during the Brontës’ time. The others were admitted later. One of the graves (Sarah Bickers’ grave) clearly mentions the Clergy school! Tick ✅
Next stop was St. John the Baptist Church in Tunstall. This is the church which the pupils from the Clergy Daughters’ school in Cowan Bridge attended each Sunday. The Reverend William Carus Wilson was the vicar there from April 1816 until 1828. The pupils had to walk approximately two miles across the fields in all kinds of weather to reach the church.
Joanne showed us the small gate through which they would have come from Cowan Bridge. They had to attend morning and afternoon services, and as it was too far to return to the school for a meal, they stayed in the church. There is a small room above the porch where they would have had their meagre cold packed lunch in between services. The room is now only accessible via a ladder, and for health and safety reasons access is not available to the general public (one has to apply for it; Joanne did and visited the room – you can read her blog report on this visit - ). In winter, when it was freezing cold outside, this visit to the church and staying there for the two services would have been real hardship for the schoolgirls. Again, Charlotte wrote about this experience in Jane Eyre (chapter 7), Tunstall Church being Brocklebridge Church:
Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church where our patron officiated. We set out cold, we arrived at church colder: during the morning service we became almost paralysed. It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in our ordinary meals, was served round between the services.
At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and hilly road, where the bitter wind, blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our face.
Inside the church there is an exhibition panel with lots of information on the Brontës and Tunstall Church, on Rev. Carus Wilson, his ideology and the Clergymen Daughters’ school in Cowan Bridge. Certainly worth a visit if you happen to be in the area! Tick ✅
Entrance to the room above the porch The Brontë exhibition panel inside Tunstall Church the way to Cowan Bridge through the fields
The next stop was lunch at the Royal Hotel in the picturesque historic market town of Kirkby Lonsdale. Joanne explained the Brontë connection. Branwell Brontë got a position as tutor in Broughton-in-Furness (in Cumbria) for the Postlethwaite family. He left Haworth on 31st December 1839 and was due to arrive in Broughton-in-Furness on New Year’s Day. He went to Keighley and from there took the coach to Kendal, with a stop in Kirkby Lonsdale where he celebrated the last night of the old year in a “riotous drinking session.” I had read about this in one of the Branwell biographies, but did not remember that it happened in Kirkby Lonsdale at the Royal Hotel.
After a lovely lunch at the hotel, during which Joanne was telling us all the details of what might have happened on that particular night, we had a stroll around the town and visited the famous Ruskin View, painted by JMW Turner. I am sure, the town will be remembered more for this connection than the one at the Royal Hotel. But I was glad to have been there and seen the place (bought no T-shirt😏). Tick ✅
On our return to Haworth, we had one last stop —in Wycoller. This is a picturesque little hamlet in Pendle, Lancashire, near the border with West Yorkshire, about 10 kilometere from Haworth. The Brontës would have visited this place. It is a very idyllic remote spot amidst woodland with ancient bridges, some old houses and the beautiful ruins of Wycoller Hall. This hall is supposed to be the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre, and indeed, when you step towards the entrance of the Hall, you can easily visualize the description in Chapter 37:
The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood …
… I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently I beheld a railing, then the house — scarce, by this dim light, distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad gravel walk girdling a grass plot, and this set in the heavy frame of the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and narrow, the front door was narrow too, one step led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms had said, ‘quite a desolate spot’.
It really is a remarkable spot, it felt magical, and it has been on my bucket list of Brontë-related places to visit for a long time. I can tick that box now as well. Tick ✅
As we returned to Haworth, Joanne was still full of Brontë-related information that she was happy to share with us. I am astonished that she knows so many details about the Brontës, things that I may have read about at some point but have not remembered. She is a great storyteller! Some of you may remember Joanne's talk to the Brussels Brontë Group in October 2024.
I am so grateful to our very enthusiastic guide for her offer to take us in her car and drive us to these places which we would probably not have visited on our own, or even have found on our own.
Such a memorable Brontë day for us, and so many of my Brontë bucket list boxes ticked! ✅✅✅✅ Thank you. Joanne🩷👍🩷
Marina Saegerman
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