Mum has long wanted to visit Haworth to check out Brontë Country. This is the Yorkshire countryside where the Brontë siblings, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne (and their brother, Branwell) lived and wrote their most famous works.
Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, in particular, is inspired by the moors that surround the town, but there are also bits of inspiration for Jane Eyre as well.
Brontë Country is great if you love a mix of culture and nature. Because of mum’s difficulty walking, we skipped much of the nature and just went to two or three key attractions in Haworth.
Brontë Parsonage
This is the parsonage where the Brontë children grew up. Their mother died young, and the children seem to have lived a rather grim, closed life. However, the house itself is gorgeous – large, bright, and airy.
These days, it is a museum set up to recreate the lives of the Brontë sisters and their father and brother. The house includes bedrooms, studies, and a dining room, containing furniture and other artifacts belonging to the family, as well as drafts of their writing and other creative works.
The parsonage is fun and quite informative, and I liked it much better than the tour we did of Dove Cottage – Wordsworth’s house, which is kind of small and poky. Now that I know what to expect from these kinds of tours, I would recommend skipping the Dove Cottage tour in the Lake District.
The Brontë Parsonage offers a wealth of additional information that provides historical context for the books. You can see the school where Charlotte Brontë taught (and which was possibly the inspiration for the schools in Jane Eyre). You can see their clothes, and there are even opportunities for cosplay – wearing their clothes and playing dress up.
St. Michael and All Angels Church
The church next to the parsonage is gorgeous. It’s an actual practicing church, so we could hear the choir practicing for Sunday sermons.
The Brontë family had a strong association with the church. A plaque inside the church commemorates the literary family, and Patrick, Charlotte, Emily, and Branwell are all buried in the family vault. Anne, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 29 years, is buried in Scarborough, where she died, three days after arriving, having hoped that the sea air would help her recover.
The Main Street
After browsing the church and its (very pretty) graveyard, we walked along the main street. This is a cobbled, historic street with tons of quaint little shops that encourage browsing. We bought a couple of fridge magnets and a postcard as souvenirs, but otherwise the shopping wasn’t really my style – kind of kooky and eccentric.
We paused for a bite to eat at The Fleece Inn – standard British food of sandwiches and burgers, but really well-done and fresh, and tasty. One of the better pub lunches out there.
Brontë Country
The surrounding countryside is beautiful, and there are many hiking trails in the area. The perfect place for some fresh air and bracing moorland views is Penistone Hill Country Park, just outside Haworth. Since mum finds walking difficult, we couldn’t explore the trails to Brontë Waterfall (a very unimpressive one, going by the photos), Top Withens (the setting for Wuthering Heights), or The Brontë Chair.
We did walk a little around the park area, enjoying the large skies and the open country views.
Beautiful views, and I wish we could have explored further and really enjoyed the countryside. Still, it’s not too far away from home, and we can always come again another day just for the hiking alone.
