Brontë birthplace

Not far from the Brontë Stone (see yesterday), in the village of Thornton itself, lies the house where the Brontës lived when father Patrick was the minister of the Bell Chapel. In my photo above, the house is on the left and you can see in the far distance the spire of St James' Church, which replaced the Bell Chapel after Patrick's time. [For more about the Bell Chapel, see my post HERE.]

Four of the Brontës' children were born in this house, in front of the fire in the parlour so it's said, before the family moved to Haworth in 1820.

In the intervening years the house has always been in private ownership. For a while it was a butcher's shop, which is why it has been extended out at the front. In the late 1990s through to 2007, it was restored and opened as a museum by crime novelist Barbara Whitehead. It then became a coffee shop but that closed during the Covid pandemic. Now, a community group, supported by private donations and a grant from Bradford's City of Culture fund has managed to purchase the property and it is currently undergoing restoration. They intend to open it as a café and holiday accommodation, dedicated to preserving the heritage and memory of the famous literary family. 

One of the four Brontë Stones, the Charlotte Stone has been placed against the wall here:

Two verses of a poem by Dame Carol Ann Duffy, a former Poet Laureate, have been inscribed. The poem in its entirety can be read HERE. The inscription reads: 

'The vice of this place clamps you; daughter; father who will not see thee wed, 

traipsing your cold circles between needlework, bed, sleep's double-lock. 

Mother and siblings, vile knot under the flagstones, biding. 

But the prose seethes, will not let you be, be thus;

bog-burst of pain, fame, love, unluck. True; enough.

So your still doll-steps in the dollshouse parsonage.

So your writer's hand the hand of a god rending the roof. '

Across the road from the birthplace, in what was once apparently a shop front, a whimsical mural alludes to the Brontës' lives and writings.