Haworth Parsonage, built in 1779, was put up for sale by the Church in 1928 for £3,000. It was bought by Sir James Roberts, who presented it to The Brontë Society. Founded in 1893 with the aim of preventing the family’s personal possessions, letters and manuscripts being lost to collectors, the Society was then able to reunite the sisters’ treasures with the parsonage, and it was opened to the public as a museum
FEATURE KATIE JARVIS PHOTOGRAPHS BEVAN COCKERILLIt is 1820, and horse-drawn carts are bumping their way along the rough, twisty, up-and-down lanes between the village of Thornton, outside Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and Haworth, perched on the bleak edge of the moors. Many residents in this grim, industrial little place are employed in the worsted wool trade; others eke out a living through subsistence farming. Although the surrounding wild moorland, clad in purple heather, offers pure, sweet air, in the unsanitary streets of Haworth, the rank smell of the cesspit constantly assails ailing lungs.
One of the grander houses of Haworth is the parsonage, sitting at the top of the steepest of high streets, which
