August 9, 2011
On the trail of the Brontes: Grassington to Glossop.
From the beginning it was the Summer morning of dreams; sunshine and still air as I cycled south along rural Yorkshire lanes; while black and white cows stirred curiously from stone-wall enclosed fields. An hour's riding took me pass the leafy riverside setting of Bolton Abbey, its ancient walls and Gothic gables laid low by the mist of time; then at a big roundabout, busy roads began as I passed into West Yorkshire known as "The West Riding"; why I don't known, but I soon found a county amid the heart of the Pennines with relentless long steep hills. I had chose my route carefully, avoiding dual-carriageways leading to big cities Bradford and Leeds; instead, a lesser road though one with the constant flow of morning rush-hour; vans and lorries through countless roundabouts and a succession of traffic-lights, as the way went up and down via villages and towns, the biggest of which being Keighley.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
By ten o'clock I dropped steeply down to Haworth in a deep valley bottom below the road. The main street had a row of redbrick terrace houses with painted shop-fronts on the left, facing a railway station on the right; through the entrance arch of which, sat at the platform, I saw a steam locomotive idly chugging away, steam hissing out and puffs of sooty smoke lingering overhead. Only this one street; surely there's more to the town than this, I thought. Further along the street I turned off right and up over a bridge across the railway; whereupon, I saw a sign for tourist information which pointed up the steep cobbled stoned street on the other side of the railroad, with a leafy park on the left and a walled-in yellow-brick and blue slate building on the right, the entrance of which was halfway up. Therein lay the tourist office I thought. Truth as it happened I hadn't seen another sign since that initial one back by the bridge, and was at a loss until I'd gone as far and met a woman coming out that I asked. She sent me further up the the hill. Having followed her directions over the road at the top, I began the steep incline up over cobble-stones, up a street of grey stone terrace houses with quaint Victorian shop fronts: it reminded me of a Yorkshire town portrayed in old Black and White television drama set sometime like the nineteen-twenties; and there were lots and lots of sightseers making it unmistakeably the town's historic centre.
"We are standing outside the old Post Office" announced the tour-guide to assembled tour-goers grouped about him, next to where I had come to a halt. "See the steps the way they are worn...."; he pointing at the steps up from street-level to the Post Office door, and talked of the corroding effect two centuries of plodding feet coming and going had had, wearing a smooth crescent into each stone; and continued, "In Victorian days there was no Internet not like today; so, each Bronte sister walked up these steps with their manuscript to post to their publisher in London".
The main focus here is the parsonage, where in the early half of the nineteen century the Brontes lived, writing simultaneously three masterpieces: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, written by Emily, Charlotte and Ann respectively.
Their mother died when they were small and there were two more sisters, Maria and Elizebeth that died in childhood, allegedly due to poor nutrition and living conditions at a boarding school they'd been sent to, which together with a severe upbringing at the hands of their ante is the real life background used in the early chapters in Jane Eyre. They also had a brother, Branwell, that became an artist and whose artist friend's portraits of the sisters are the only image of them as they weren't as recognized in their life time as they became posthumously. The Reverend Patrick Bronte's responsibilities weren't just his parishioners spiritual well-being, but also social such as public works and poor relief. Haworth was then a new wool spinning town with squalid housing conditions in which disease epidemics were rife; upwards of twenty families shared one privy and water from the public pump was often contaminated by seepage from the nearby churchyard which was full to overflowing.
The Bronte Literary Society was founded in 1893 by enthusiasts to care for all things Bronte. It was not until 1928 however that The Parsonage was donated to the society; and ever since the Bronte family home as it was in their time, has been there to see, giving an insight into their domestic life.
To the right of the entrance hall, Patrick Bronte's study is dimly lit, a musty brown wainscoting with a mantelpiece, bookshelves, a writing bureau and a piano that his daughter Emily played. Across the hall the drawing-room holds more interest as it was around the table here, the sisters sat and wrote. In the evenings by lamplight it is said, they would gather round and slowly move around the same drawing-room table while discussing the development of characters and narrative; a practice Charlotte carried on in solitude with later projects, across the spiritual divide after fever and death took Emily, and a matter of months later the same fate visited Ann in Scarborough were she had traveled believing sea-air would cure her respiratory borne illness. They were only 32 and 29 years respectively but have gone down in the phantom of great nineteen century writers that were ahead of there time, challenging the stiff social conformity of the Victorian era. The exhibits continued into other rooms, with Branwell's tin soldiers which as children they used to create a kind of toy theatre; a collection of original letters; and upstairs to Charlotte room where behind glass cabinets are her dresses and bonnets; artifacts such as a sunshade, combs, spectacles and even baby clothing, as she had married her father's curate, a Mr Nicholas, and was expecting when she too fell ill and died aged only 39 years.
Walking out of the parsonage garden, there's an alleyway downhill along the churchyard and pass the church which is relatively new; built in 1879 by Patrick Brontes successor, an industrialist that had amassed a fortunue before he became a man of the cloth; it replaced the old church dating from the middle ages. Opposite is the old single classroom school where Charlotte taught, which in its day was run by the church for mill worker's children. Up the other way the alley leads to a field at the back of the parsonage which, apart from some lawn-mown paths and a park bench or two, has been left to grow wild meadow grasses and wildflowers; also owned by the Bronte Society it is an attempt at preserving a piece of open heath the way the Brontes would have known it in the early nineteen century.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
My visit to Haworth detained me to after lunch time when I continued along the little road over open hilltop beyond the natural meadow at the back of the Parsonage, avoiding busy roads for most of the afternoon. I cycled along a dedicated cycle-path through undergrowth and woodland and along leafy river valley; on another stretch I rode high up with a near vertical wooded drop and fine view to the side, the odd redbrick cylindrical factory chimney or underground locomotive vent poking up amid rolling green hills. By five o'clock Is crossing bleak heathland, looking west over Manchester. I could have seen as far as Liverpool but rain was closing in in that direction, and instead saw skyscrapers rising out of distant hazy grey cityscape. Dropping down and passing through a succession of towns on the fringe of the city, I got lost a few times, as all roads headed to Rochdale, Oldham, or across the mountain to Huddersfield; no single road by-passed the city in a general southern direction. I was stopped studying the map pretty often, and it was one such halt that a lyra-cad training cyclist stopped and volunteered to give me directions as he said Is looking lost. In the end I found my way on to an urban tentacle south east to Glossop on the edge of The Peak District National Park, just as daylight was waning. In Glossop, I grocery shopped at a small cornershop and went to the fish and chip shop next door. I was eating my chips from the paper cone rapping outside when a middle aged couple stopped a moment to ask me where I'd cycled from, the man saying he too was a cyclist. He told me about a campsite two miles out of town, so there is were I went, making it just before dark.
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |