What to See in England: A Guide to Places of Historic Interest, Natural Beauty or Literary AssociationHome, Gordon
History
What to See in England: A Guide to Places of Historic Interest, Natural Beauty or Literary Association
Home, Gordon
England -- Guidebooks; Wales -- Guidebooks
Haworth is a long straggling village 4 miles from Keighley, a large
manufacturing town in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The road is very
steep to the village--"four tough, scrambling miles." It consists of one
street, so steep that the flagstones with which it is paved are placed
end-ways that the horses may not stumble. Past the church and the lonely
parsonage are the wide moors, high, wild, and desolate, up above the
world, solitary and silent. This gray, sad-looking parsonage, so close
to the still sadder churchyard, is a spot of more than ordinary
interest, for it was the home of the Brontës--that wonderfully gifted
and extraordinary family! Charlotte Brontë shared with her sisters their
intense love for the wild, black, purple moors, rising and sweeping away
yet higher than the church which is built at the summit of the one long
narrow street. All round the horizon are wave-like hills. _Jane Eyre_,
published in 1847, written with extraordinary power and wonderful
genius, astonished the entire reading world. Little did any one imagine
that the authoress lived far away from the busy haunts of men in a quiet
northern parsonage, leading a gentle, sad life; for her two sisters,
whom Charlotte loved as her own life, were very delicate, and their one
brother, in whom they had placed great hopes, had given way to drink.
Charlotte was known to the literary world as Currer Bell, her sisters as
Acton and Ellis Bell. After _Jane Eyre_ came _Shirley_, written in a
period of great sorrow, for her two loved sisters died within a short
space of each other, not long after the death of their unhappy brother,
and Charlotte was left alone in the quiet, sad parsonage with only her
aged father. _Villette_ was well received. It was her last work.
Charlotte Brontë married, in 1854, the Rev. Arthur Nichols, and after a
few brief months of happiness passed away on March 31, 1855, at the
early age of thirty-nine.
Haworth has been much influenced by the growth of Keighley.
[Illustration: _W.T. Stead, Heckmondwike._
THE PARSONAGE AT HAWORTH, FROM THE CHURCHYARD.
Where Charlotte Brontë and her family lived.]
RIEVAULX ABBEY
=How to get there.=--Train from King's Cross. Great Northern Rly.
=Nearest Station.=--Helmsley.
=Distance from London.=--219-1/4 miles.
=Average Time.=--Varies between 3-3/4 to 5 hours.
1st 2nd 3rd
=Fares.=--Single 31s. 3d. ... 18s. 3-1/2d.
Return 62s. 6d. ... 36s. 7d.
=Accommodation Obtainable.=--"Black Swan" and "Crown" Hotels
at Helmsley. There is no inn at Rievaulx.
=Alternative Route.=--Train from St. Pancras _via_ Sheffield. Midland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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