THE BRONTES

Courtesy of the Bronte Society, these prints are exclusively available from the gift shop of the Bronte Parsonage Museum Shop or through their online facility.
http://www.bronte.info/


THE PARSONAGE
Haworth, West Yorkshire.
Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey were all written here.

'The parsonage stands at right angles to the road,facing down upon the church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church and belfried school-house, form three sides of an irregular oblong, of which the fourth is open to the fields and moors that lie beyond. The area of this oblong is filled up by a crowded churchyard and a small garden or court in front of the clergyman's house. As the entrance to this from the road is at the side, the path goes round the corner into the little plot of ground. Underneath the windows is a narrow flower-border, carefuly tended in days of yore, although only the most hardy plants could be made to grow there. Within the stone wall, which keeps out the surrounding churchyard, are bushes of elder and lilac; the rest of the ground is occupied by a square grass plot and a gravel walk. the house is of grey stone, two stories high, heavily roofed with flags, in order to resist the winds that might strip off a lighter covering. It appears to have been built about a hundred years ago, and to consist of four rooms on each storey; the two windows on the right (as the visitor stands, with his back to the church, ready to enter in at the front door) belonging to Mr. Bronte's study, the two on the left to the family sitting room. Everything about the place tells of the most dainty order, the most exquisite cleanliness. The door-steps are spotless; the small old-fashioned window-panes glitter like looking glass. Inside and outside of that house cleanliness goes up into its essence, purity.'
Mrs Gaskell - The Life of Charlotte Bronte 1857




TOP WITHENS
Said to have been the inspiration for the location of the Earnshaw family house 'Wuthering Heights' in the novel by Emily Bronte.
'Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. 'Wuthering' being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather.'