Home to the Brontë sisters, locals fear development in Haworth, the Yorkshire village that is a highlight of any literary tour of Britain.
Beauty and the beast: the inspiring views of the moors around Haworth, such an integral component of the Brontës' work, could be blighted by the kind of building work that the planners envisage Photo: GABRIEL SZABO/GUZELIAN
There is a Brontë Hotel in Haworth, and a Brontë minicab company, and Ye Olde Brontë Tea Rooms. Not forgetting the Brontë Balti House (free delivery for orders over £6).
Charlotte, Emily and Anne would have been amazed to discover how ubiquitous their family name has become. The sisters were unwitting authors of an industry when, in search of childhood entertainment, they began making up stories, personal histories of the toy soldiers given to their brother Branwell by their father Patrick, perpetual curate of St Michael and All Angels.
The Brontë myth enshrouds Haworth and its overlooking moors even more completely than Shakespeare's does Stratford. This corner of the industrial West Riding is captured in literary amber.
"Haworth expresses the Brontës; the Brontës express Haworth," wrote Virginia Woolf after a visit to the village in 1904. "They fit like a snail to its shell."
Climb the steep, cobbled high street to the parsonage where the family lived and the modern world fades. The churchyard is dark even on a clear blue winter afternoon, its tall, gothic gravestones bent this way and that, blackened, mossy faces recording lives snatched away by consumption, typhoid and malnutrition. Crows mourn overhead, completing the melancholy. Even the Japanese coach parties, up to five a day in the summer, cannot dispel its essential silence.
Haworth may suffer to a degree from chocolate-boxitis, as many British tourist "experiences" do, but the tea and gift shoppes cannot disguise the enduring moodiness of the place. Best to come in bad weather, when the Pennine wind slaps the face and the rain is horizontal.
"If Patrick Brontë walked out of his front door he would recognise the buildings, he would recognise the same field patterns," says John Huxley, chairman of Haworth parish council. "But if he were to go down to the bottom of the village 10 years from now he wouldn't know where the hell he was."
Mr Huxley is talking about a piece of vandalism that could be dreamt up only by the men who, in an earlier incarnation, gave us system-built, high-rise flats and no-go housing estates. Bradford council's planners want to build 600 houses in Haworth, a settlement of 2,500 homes now, surrounding the village with "executive" homes and cheaper, more humble dwellings. Brownfield sites, home to old textile mills, will be used, but green belt also.
Haworth, Britain's second literary tourist attraction after Stratford- upon-Avon, is falling victim to this country's hunger for new homes. Bradford council wants to see 48,500 houses built within its boundaries by 2028 to accommodate a growing population, including immigrants from south Asia and Eastern Europe. Haworth and neighbouring villages in the Worth Valley such as Oakworth, setting for the film The Railway Children, must take their share, say the men in the town hall.
They have government on their side. The Coalition is preparing to tear up 1,300 pages of planning regulations and replace them with just 52 in an attempt to stimulate house building. Following the Telegraph's widely supported Hands Off Our Land campaign, there are signs that ministers are preparing to rebalance the proposals, giving more emphasis to the environment, but there will still be a presumption in favour of sustainable development, whatever that is, and more freedom to build in the green belt.
"If you talk to people in Haworth, they don't like Bradford council," says the Rev Peter Mayo-Smith, Patrick Brontë's successor at St Michael and All Angels. "We are not saying 'No' to any housing. But we are saying, 'be sensible'. If you had a factory making lots of money, would you knock half of it down? Well, this is a tourism factory.
"A lot of people make the mistake of thinking people come solely because of the Brontës. In fact, only about 10 per cent of tourists visit the parsonage. They come for the beauty of the village as a whole."
Patrick Brontë, an Ulster Anglican of humble origins, gentrified his surname from Brunty to Brontë while reading divinity at Cambridge. He outlived his wife Maria and all six of his children. Maria died of cancer in 1821, a year after the family's arrival in Haworth. Tuberculosis, a dependable killer, carried off her daughters Maria and Elizabeth in 1825 at the ages of 11 and 10.
The four younger children survived into adulthood but none would see 40. Branwell, regarded as an unconsummated genius by his father and sisters, succumbed to drink, laudanum addiction and illness in September 1848 at the age of 31, followed in December by Emily, struck down at 30. Anne died of TB in Scarborough the following May, aged 29. She is buried at the resort. Charlotte was last to go, carried away by tuberculosis or some other illness while carrying her first child, in March 1855. She was 38. Such carnage was hardly unusual in Haworth, where average life expectancy was about 25.
Early death paved the way for literary immortality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre conferred celebrity during her lifetime but Emily's arguably greater work, Wuthering Heights, was initially distrusted for its unconventional structure and the dangerous passions it conveyed. No sooner had Charlotte breathed her last than the tourists were beating a path to the parsonage.
"From the earliest days there was this myth that the Brontës inhabited a house surrounded by wild moors, living in total isolation," says Andrew McCarthy, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum. "This was never true because the Worth Valley was an industrial area even then, mainly textiles. The Brontës lived on the dividing line between industry and untamed moorland to the west. You don't have to walk far to enter another world. The fear is that, with more and more housing, this world will disappear in stages."
Landscape has always been integral to Brontë writing, most notably in the poems of Emily and in her sole novel, Wuthering Heights. The moors where the Brontë children played were a dreamscape, wild places free of Victorian convention.
In her preface to Emily's poetry, Charlotte describes them: "The scenery of these hills is not grand – it is not romantic; it is scarcely striking. Long low moors, dark with heath, shut in little valleys, where a stream waters, here and there, a fringe of stunted copse.
"Mills and scattered cottages chase romance from these valleys; it is only higher up, deep in amongst the ridges of the moors, that Imagination can find rest for the sole of her foot: and even if she finds it there, she must be a solitude-loving raven – no gentle dove. If she demand beauty to inspire her, she must bring it inborn: these moors are too stern to yield any product so delicate."
If built, the executive villas will be visible from the edge of the moors, filling in more of the precious fields around Haworth. Visitors will have more need to look away – there is already plenty of ugly housing from the Sixties surrounding poor Oakworth.
"Six hundred houses in a small place like this is massive," says Mr Huxley. "People coming into the village will be met by executive housing estates. We are an iconic part of the North, and what we look like – the view of the village from across the valley – is absolutely crucial. If we are a tourist destination, we should be respected as such."
English Heritage considers Haworth a village at risk and has offered to pay 80 per cent of the cost of returning shopfronts to their original appearance. That won't make much difference if Haworth ceases to be a village and becomes a commuter town.
"The Brontës as writers are synonymous with landscape," says Mr McCarthy. "They had a deep attachment to this place; they were continually drawn back to this source of inspiration. They would not be happy to see it spoiled."
Plus ça change. In 1879 John Wade, Patrick Brontë's successor, pulled down the old church and rebuilt it, to wails of protest from Brontë admirers. Only the clocktower remains from the Brontës' time, pockmarked by musket balls fired by Patrick to scare away the ravens. Wade was a veritable Brontëphobe, refusing to christen girls Charlotte, Emily or Anne.
Mr Mayo-Smith must fight another battle while fending off developers: finding £1.25 million to repair his weather-beaten church, the south-facing roof of which is taking in water. Criminals have done their bit, stripping lead from the roof three times in the last 18 months.
The vicar finds solace in walks on the moors. The ground is hard with frost, the undergrowth brittle white, as he explains their beauty. A single leaning tree and a signpost (in English and Japanese) break the horizon. "It was May, an awful day. The rain was lashing in from the moors, the wind was strong, and I came up here to pray. It was barren, forlorn, elemental. Wonderful."
Nearby, a henge of books erupts from the ground, stone books, moss-covered sculptures, a tribute to the inspirational power of this lonely expanse.
"My sister Emily loved the moors," wrote Charlotte. "Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was – liberty."
"If Patrick Brontë walked out of his front door he would recognise the buildings, he would recognise the same field patterns," says John Huxley, chairman of Haworth parish council. "But if he were to go down to the bottom of the village 10 years from now he wouldn't know where the hell he was."
Mr Huxley is talking about a piece of vandalism that could be dreamt up only by the men who, in an earlier incarnation, gave us system-built, high-rise flats and no-go housing estates. Bradford council's planners want to build 600 houses in Haworth, a settlement of 2,500 homes now, surrounding the village with "executive" homes and cheaper, more humble dwellings. Brownfield sites, home to old textile mills, will be used, but green belt also.
Haworth, Britain's second literary tourist attraction after Stratford- upon-Avon, is falling victim to this country's hunger for new homes. Bradford council wants to see 48,500 houses built within its boundaries by 2028 to accommodate a growing population, including immigrants from south Asia and Eastern Europe. Haworth and neighbouring villages in the Worth Valley such as Oakworth, setting for the film The Railway Children, must take their share, say the men in the town hall.
They have government on their side. The Coalition is preparing to tear up 1,300 pages of planning regulations and replace them with just 52 in an attempt to stimulate house building. Following the Telegraph's widely supported Hands Off Our Land campaign, there are signs that ministers are preparing to rebalance the proposals, giving more emphasis to the environment, but there will still be a presumption in favour of sustainable development, whatever that is, and more freedom to build in the green belt.
"If you talk to people in Haworth, they don't like Bradford council," says the Rev Peter Mayo-Smith, Patrick Brontë's successor at St Michael and All Angels. "We are not saying 'No' to any housing. But we are saying, 'be sensible'. If you had a factory making lots of money, would you knock half of it down? Well, this is a tourism factory.
"A lot of people make the mistake of thinking people come solely because of the Brontës. In fact, only about 10 per cent of tourists visit the parsonage. They come for the beauty of the village as a whole."
Patrick Brontë, an Ulster Anglican of humble origins, gentrified his surname from Brunty to Brontë while reading divinity at Cambridge. He outlived his wife Maria and all six of his children. Maria died of cancer in 1821, a year after the family's arrival in Haworth. Tuberculosis, a dependable killer, carried off her daughters Maria and Elizabeth in 1825 at the ages of 11 and 10.
The four younger children survived into adulthood but none would see 40. Branwell, regarded as an unconsummated genius by his father and sisters, succumbed to drink, laudanum addiction and illness in September 1848 at the age of 31, followed in December by Emily, struck down at 30. Anne died of TB in Scarborough the following May, aged 29. She is buried at the resort. Charlotte was last to go, carried away by tuberculosis or some other illness while carrying her first child, in March 1855. She was 38. Such carnage was hardly unusual in Haworth, where average life expectancy was about 25.
Early death paved the way for literary immortality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre conferred celebrity during her lifetime but Emily's arguably greater work, Wuthering Heights, was initially distrusted for its unconventional structure and the dangerous passions it conveyed. No sooner had Charlotte breathed her last than the tourists were beating a path to the parsonage.
"From the earliest days there was this myth that the Brontës inhabited a house surrounded by wild moors, living in total isolation," says Andrew McCarthy, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum. "This was never true because the Worth Valley was an industrial area even then, mainly textiles. The Brontës lived on the dividing line between industry and untamed moorland to the west. You don't have to walk far to enter another world. The fear is that, with more and more housing, this world will disappear in stages."
Landscape has always been integral to Brontë writing, most notably in the poems of Emily and in her sole novel, Wuthering Heights. The moors where the Brontë children played were a dreamscape, wild places free of Victorian convention.
In her preface to Emily's poetry, Charlotte describes them: "The scenery of these hills is not grand – it is not romantic; it is scarcely striking. Long low moors, dark with heath, shut in little valleys, where a stream waters, here and there, a fringe of stunted copse.
"Mills and scattered cottages chase romance from these valleys; it is only higher up, deep in amongst the ridges of the moors, that Imagination can find rest for the sole of her foot: and even if she finds it there, she must be a solitude-loving raven – no gentle dove. If she demand beauty to inspire her, she must bring it inborn: these moors are too stern to yield any product so delicate."
If built, the executive villas will be visible from the edge of the moors, filling in more of the precious fields around Haworth. Visitors will have more need to look away – there is already plenty of ugly housing from the Sixties surrounding poor Oakworth.
"Six hundred houses in a small place like this is massive," says Mr Huxley. "People coming into the village will be met by executive housing estates. We are an iconic part of the North, and what we look like – the view of the village from across the valley – is absolutely crucial. If we are a tourist destination, we should be respected as such."
English Heritage considers Haworth a village at risk and has offered to pay 80 per cent of the cost of returning shopfronts to their original appearance. That won't make much difference if Haworth ceases to be a village and becomes a commuter town.
"The Brontës as writers are synonymous with landscape," says Mr McCarthy. "They had a deep attachment to this place; they were continually drawn back to this source of inspiration. They would not be happy to see it spoiled."
Plus ça change. In 1879 John Wade, Patrick Brontë's successor, pulled down the old church and rebuilt it, to wails of protest from Brontë admirers. Only the clocktower remains from the Brontës' time, pockmarked by musket balls fired by Patrick to scare away the ravens. Wade was a veritable Brontëphobe, refusing to christen girls Charlotte, Emily or Anne.
Mr Mayo-Smith must fight another battle while fending off developers: finding £1.25 million to repair his weather-beaten church, the south-facing roof of which is taking in water. Criminals have done their bit, stripping lead from the roof three times in the last 18 months.
The vicar finds solace in walks on the moors. The ground is hard with frost, the undergrowth brittle white, as he explains their beauty. A single leaning tree and a signpost (in English and Japanese) break the horizon. "It was May, an awful day. The rain was lashing in from the moors, the wind was strong, and I came up here to pray. It was barren, forlorn, elemental. Wonderful."
Nearby, a henge of books erupts from the ground, stone books, moss-covered sculptures, a tribute to the inspirational power of this lonely expanse.
"My sister Emily loved the moors," wrote Charlotte. "Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was – liberty."
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