Visiting the Brontë Parsonage

Over the course of the year and particularly when we are busy working on the Festival programme we go to lots of meetings at venues across the region, but today was particularly enjoyable as we were meeting with the team from the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Not only did we have tea and scones at a lovely cafe in Haworth and share ideas for future events and collaborations, we also spent some time looking around the Parsonage.

21 April this year is the 200th anniversary of Charlotte’s birth and marks the start of the Brontë 200 celebrations, which over the next 4 years will also commemorate the births of Branwell, Emily and Anne. These celebrations will naturally be a part of our programming and there are lots of ways for us to do so.

Seeing where the Brontës lived and wrote is fascinating and moving around their home set us off on many discussions and tangents, from which books were on their shelves to how small Charlotte’s hands were. There is of course the famous portrait of the sisters hanging on the stairs, with the ghostly spectre of Branwell visible in the background and the very faint pencil scribblings on the wall of their childhood study. Even on a beautiful spring day you can still get a sense of the isolation they must have experienced at the Parsonage and the impact the wild landscape had on their work.

We have come away with lots of ideas for 2016 and beyond, so look out for our strands and events celebrating the talented and intriguing Brontë family.