Top Withins

From the Brontë Falls, if you follow the rough track that climbs the valley side, you can walk on to Top Withins, the ruined farmhouse that is reputed to have been the inspiration for the Earnshaw home in Emily Brontë's novel 'Wuthering Heights'. It is spelled 'Withins' on OS maps and most signs but seems to have become 'Withens' in popular culture. Most of the online links I found spell it that way. It is a popular literary shrine. The signposts to it are in English and Japanese!

There are plaques explaining a little of its history. The land here was farmed for at least 400 years, until the 1890s. In 1591, William Bentley divided his estate between his three sons, and that probably led to the origins of the three farms: Top, Middle and Lower Withins, all now ruined. This kind of divided inheritance was common in the area and meant that families were forced to support themselves with ever dwindling parcels of land, resulting in much poverty and distress. The land was hard to work anyway and only supported a few dairy cattle, sheep and small fields of oats. Families supplemented their income by hand loom weaving and the men worked in the many stone quarries on the moors.

The views from up here are bleakly beautiful. It's rarely warm, with keen winds sweeping across the moors. It must have been a difficult place to live, even though in those days there was a lot more activity, with people living and working on the moorland.

There are a few hamlets and villages nearby but Haworth, the nearest place of any size, is about four miles across the moor. In my photo below, it lies in the dip beyond the trees on the hill. Although the area looks rather flat in the photo, that is deceptive. This is a high moorland plateau, dissected by deep V-shaped valleys cut by small streams and sloping gradually down in the distance to the broad valley of the River Aire, which was originally gouged out by a glacier 12,000 years ago. The steep and narrow gorge where the Brontë Falls is situated is the zig-zag, bracken-filled line on the right. 

The Brontë Waterfalls

A couple of miles from Haworth, as the moors rise up, there's a pretty spot, nowadays called the Brontë Waterfalls. It is described in some of the writings of the famous literary sisters, who lived in the parsonage in Haworth, so it is known that they visited it. Charlotte described the water as 'a perfect torrent racing over the rocks, white and beautiful'. Sometimes when I've been it's been a mere trickle but, as we'd had recent rain, there was a cascade of peaty water, if not exactly a torrent.

The stream that tumbles down off the moor over the falls joins a slightly larger beck at this point, spanned by a little bridge (no longer the original clapper bridge, which was washed away in a flood some years ago). The Brontës called it 'the meeting of the waters'.  It's a popular spot for picnics and there is always someone sitting in the most photogenic location. At least this couple's clothing blended in with the scenery!

If you have the stamina, you can walk on from here up to the ruined farmhouse at Top Withins. You can perhaps just see it in the photo below, under the lone tree on the skyline. It's not that far, perhaps a further two miles from the falls, but it is not the easy stroll some people imagine. In fact, the route from Stanbury along the Pennine Way is rather easier, with a wider, flagged path.

Heather

After seeing the heather in bloom at St Ives, Bingley the other day, I decided I'd take a walk on Haworth Moor, where there is more of it - or so I remembered. In fact, it seems to me to be declining even there, taken over by bracken and grasses. I don't think it's just my memory. I'm pretty sure there was a lot more of it ten or fifteen years ago. Climate change? Or the way the moors are managed now, perhaps. There is still, however, enough of it to give that lovely purple haze effect and the scent was gorgeous - a kind of soft, honeyed fragrance.

The moors are grazed by a few hardy sheep: the Yorkshire Swaledale breed, I think. For some reason, this little flock formed a (fairly) orderly queue as I approached. Sweet.

The land around Haworth Moor was quarried for stone and there are lots of dry stone walls, of a slightly different character to those higher up in the Dales. Many of them are collapsing, and don't seem to be maintained. Sheep-creeps or cripple holes are square holes in the wall that allow sheep to move from one field to another. In the photo below, the lintel has broken and the hole is no longer useable - but there were open spaces in the wall nearby anyway, so the sheep could move freely around.

Brontë Country

I love the drive over to my daughter's home in the summer, across the moors between the Aire valley and the Calder valley. I had to stop the other day just to drink in the wonderful view. This is truly 'Brontë country', as the tourist brochures would have it. The village of Haworth, where the famous writers, the Brontë sisters, lived in the parsonage in the early 1800s, is in the dip in the middle right of the picture below. Some of the village is visible from this viewpoint but the oldest part is hidden by the trees right in the centre of the photo. In the picture above, the water on the left is Leeshaw Reservoir, one of a series built in the late 1800s/early 1900s to provide fresh water for the town of Keighley and its environs. It wasn't there when the Brontë sisters roamed the moors, and the rough moorland made famous in their novels may well have extended further than it does today. In the picture above, you can see a dark patch on the left beyond the reservoir, which is just the edge of the heather moorland that is Haworth Moor, leading up to the ruined farmhouse at Top Withens, reputed to have inspired Emily Brontë's novel 'Wuthering Heights'. 

Haworth mural

This colourful mural stands in one of the car parks in Haworth. It's called 'Tour D'Art part II' and was commissioned from local artist Vic Buta, under the community banner of celebrating local life, when the Tour de France Grand Départ passed through the area in 2014.

See how many of the references you can get...  (If you click the photo you can make it larger.)



There are:
Haworth main street
The Brontë Parsonage sign
The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway
The Railway Children (the novel by Edith Nesbit, set in this area and famously filmed round here in 1970)
A Haworth busker
The Brontë Tractor Run (an annual charity event)
Oxenhope Straw Race
Ebor Mill
Top Withens
The Fairtrade symbol (Haworth was the world''s first Fairtrade village) 
Cricket Club sign
1940s Hovis ad (boy pushing bike up steep hill)
A Tour de France cyclist
Red phone box (stands in Haworth's main square)
A cat
A pheasant
Ripples (land art created for the TdeF) 
The 'Hollywood' type sign erected for the TdF in Oxenhope
and, bizarrely, Peru's Macchu Picchu - with which Haworth is twinned - see HERE

Three angles on Lower Laithe

Lower Laithe Reservoir, west of Haworth, was constructed in the 1920s by building a dam across the Sladen valley, just above where Sladen Beck joins the River Wharfe. It supplies water to Keighley and the surrounding area. It is a noticeable landmark when seen from the higher moorland around it.

The valve tower is quite distinctive - and its walkway provides a roost for flocks of black-headed gulls.

There was hardly a breath of wind when I was walking there, so there were some interesting reflections in the water.

The Worth valley

One tends to think of Haworth as surrounded by moorland (with visions of the Brontë sisters wandering about poetically among the heather). In fact, the heather moorland is mostly south and west of the village. To the northwest, north and east, the village overlooks the gentler scenery of the Worth valley - rough, rolling farmland and woods.

There's a track behind the Parsonage that takes you out along West Lane and Cemetery Road, to the cemetery that is now used for burials, since the churchyard is so overcrowded with graves. Beyond that you have the option of heading for the open moor and the Brontë Falls or making a gentler descent into the valley to Lower Laithe Reservoir. I opted for the second route, since storm clouds were building. I had a nice circular walk and just made it back to my car before the sleet started.

Haworth's church

This is the quintessential view of the Brontë Parsonage, the one that all the tourist brochures show: taken from the crowded graveyard that surrounds the church, with all its lichen covered gravestones. In the wall separating the two, there's a stone that notes that when the Brontës lived there, there was a gate and path that connected the house directly with the church.

The church, St Michael and All Angels, is still Haworth's parish church and tries to balance its duties as a spiritual centre with its role as a tourist attraction. It is currently undergoing some extensive restoration. The present church is not actually the building the Brontës would have known, as it was rebuilt in 1879, after their deaths, when the old church was found to be unsafe and unsanitary - water from the graveyard was seeping in through the floor.

With the exception of Anne, all the Brontë family are buried in a vault under the church, over which a memorial chapel has been constructed. Anne died of TB in Scarborough and was buried there.

The Brontë Parsonage

Back to Haworth - 
 I'm sure most people are aware of the connection between Haworth and the Brontë sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Their father, Revd Patrick Brontë, became the minister in Haworth in 1820 and the three sisters lived and wrote their famous novels in the Parsonage there. It is now a museum, still furnished much as it was in their time, though the wing on the right with the gable was added by Patrick's successor and there is now a visitor centre round the back. 

Walking from the village centre, up the cobbled lane, past the church and the schoolroom that the Brontës built and at which Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell all taught, you could well imagine yourself back in the 1840s. 

The Big Issue seller

The centre of Haworth village is, I suppose, the area just below the parish church, where a junction of cobbled lanes opens into what might loosely be called 'a square', although it isn't square and is barely big enough to justify the term. There is a pub at either end, a telephone box and a building that held the tourist information office until it was closed (more budget cuts!). It was here that the Big Issue North seller was sitting, even though there were very few people about. She looked so very cold. I didn't buy a magazine as I didn't want to have to carry it about, but I did give her a donation.

The Big Issue magazine was launched in London in 1991 as a way to help people struggling to earn legitimate income. Big Issue North developed from that and is now a separate entity. Sellers buy the magazine for £1.25 and sell it for £2.50, keeping the profit. They come from a variety of backgrounds but all face the problems of poverty and inequality (though they are not all rough sleepers). Many sellers locally are women and often appear to be of an Eastern European background. The Big Issue charities work to highlight the issues of poverty and rough sleeping, and attempt to alleviate some of the pressures for individuals.

Haworth details

Just a few of the details that caught my eye when I was wandering around Haworth.

Alleys and lanes

Haworth, more than most places, is a bewildering jumble of narrow lanes, alleys and ginnels, some wide enough for vehicles but many only accessible on foot. It has grown up over many centuries, from the early days when villagers subsisted on a few acres of poor farmland and maybe some hand loom weaving or wool combing. By the time the Brontës lived here in the 1820-50s, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing; mills, powered by water and later steam, were taking over. Haworth was crowded, polluted and unhygienic. The average age of death was 24 and 41% of children failed to reach their sixth birthday! Nowadays, the crowded cottages are attractively converted, some of them are holiday homes, and the narrow streets are honeypots for tourists.

Hobbling around Haworth

I somehow managed to seize up my back a couple of weeks ago. Whilst I've regained some freedom of movement, it still aches. I'm trying to keep moving, as sitting still doesn't help. So, despite the temperature hovering around freezing, I took myself off for a hobble round Haworth. It was cold but there wasn't a breath of wind so it was actually really pleasant wandering around in the weak sunshine. I'd forgotten that the Brontë Parsonage Museum closes during January, as do many of the cafés and tourist shops, so there were only a handful of other visitors and I could appreciate 'the bones' of the village, rather than fighting through the crowds.

It isn't exactly a pretty place (too gritty and 'northern' for that) but it has a lot of charm, with its steep, cobbled main street (made famous recently as a challenging climb on the Tours de France and Yorkshire cycle races). There is a host of little alleys and backstreets to explore too, as well as the area around the Parsonage and church.

The imposing Hall Green Baptist Chapel sits at the bottom of the main street, with a glorious view of fields beyond. Haworth was an important centre during the Evangelical revival in the 18th century, which led to the birth of Methodism. (Interesting article HERE about that and Patrick Brontë's links to it).

The lack of crowds meant it was easier to appreciate the many different shapes and sizes of buildings that line the main street. There is a wondrous hodgepodge of houses, pubs and commercial premises clinging to its slopes.

In festive mood

Haworth is a magnet for tourists as a result of its old-fashioned charm and the important Brontë connection. During the year, it holds several themed weekends and the bunting was still flying after the recent 1940s Weekend.  (Click the 1940s label below to see pictures I took at the 1940s weekend in 2012.) The Black Bull pub has been there since Victorian times and was a frequent haunt of Branwell Brontë.

Main Street

This is one of the views most associated with the village of Haworth, looking down the traditionally cobbled Main Street, with wonderful views of the surrounding countryside beyond. One of the stages of the Tour de France in 2014 had the cyclists riding UP this street!

School Room

On the Haworth film set, they have also built a replica of the old School Room, which occupies the lane beyond the Parish Church and leading up to the Parsonage. Rev'd Patrick Brontë was a passionate social reformer and he fought for and eventually built a school to educate the poor children of Haworth, which in the early 1800s was a dreadful, disease-ridden and impoverished village where people's life expectancy was well below that of the rural area around it. Almost half the children born there died before reaching their fifth birthday. The school opened in 1832. All of the Brontë sisters taught there at one time or another. It was also the venue for the wedding celebration when Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls in 1854. It closed as a school in 1903 and has since been used as a community hall. It (the real one!) was hosting a sale of vintage clothes and wedding dresses on the day I visited.