Bronte Parsonage Museum Go where Jacob Elrody and Margot Robbie did in ‘Wuthering Heights’

An artist’s sketch of Haworth Parsonage, the former residence of the famous Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne – hangs in my childhood home. Nearly 40 years old, the framed casement cloth depicts the parsonage as it was in his time – a Georgian house on a desolate landscape overlooking a churchyard dotted with moss-covered graves. The famous Yorkshire moorland lies beyond – mist floating over wet grass, battered by rain. A landscape that the sisters saw every time they looked out the window and which greatly influenced their writing, especially Emily’s Gothic Wuthering Heights It depicts star-crossed lovers Heathcliff and Katherine Earnshaw struggling to defy their destiny on those moors. The novel is back in the news with the release of the film Emerald Fennell starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, which has brought a new influx of interest in the Brontë Parsonage Museum (BPM).

Dianne Fair, Outreach Officer, BPM, says, “Urbanisation has had little impact on the area around the Parsonage. A photograph taken today would look similar to a sketch drawn in the time of the Brontës. Haworth itself is also relatively unchanged. The shops on the cobbled Main Street are different – there are now cafes and gift shops instead of butchers and tailors – but the buildings look much the same as they used to. Beyond the village, The swamps are the same.”

The BPM is run by the Brontë Society, which was founded in 1893 to promote interest in the Brontë family and their works. The aim was to establish a permanent home for items relating to the Brontës, and the first museum opened in 1895 above the Yorkshire Penny Bank on Haworth Main Street. Haworth Parsonage was purchased by Sir James Roberts and gifted to the non-profit when it opened as BPM in 1928. “The Society sought to restore it as it appeared in the Brontës’ time, and almost all the objects and furniture on display belonged to the family,” says Dianne.

A room in the Brontë Parsonage Museum Photo credit: Bevan Cockerill

BPM, open from Wednesday to Monday, now stands in a nice garden full of trees and flower beds. Wandering through its rooms, where there are writing desks, letters, clothes and more, one wonders how the daughters of a country pastor, who constantly battled illness, produced some of the most dramatic novels in the English language. It was Charlotte who encouraged her siblings to publish their work and she first published it under a pseudonym.

“It’s impossible to say who was the most popular,” says Dianne. “Charlotte and Emily are better known than their younger sister Anne, but many visitors know about Anne’s novels, especially Tenants of Wildfell Hall. Charlotte was most famous during her lifetime and we know more about her simply because she lived longer and corresponded with people (especially her best friend Ellen Nussey) throughout her life,” she says. “Many visitors are huge fans of hers Jane Eyre And have come here to see where the novel was written. While we know less about her only novel, Emily Wuthering Heights It has captivated readers since it was published in 1847, and fans of the novel are eager to visit where the mysterious Emily grew up and walk the landscape that inspired her. Since the announcement of the new Wuthering Heights There has been a surge in the sales of films and novels. The number of visitors is around 60,000–70,000 per year and comprises 80% domestic tourists and 20% foreign tourists.

Margot Robbie at the premiere in London | Photo Credit: Scott A. Garfitt

The BPM Collection has been certified as a Designated Collection by Arts Council England. For the film’s London premiere, Margot Robbie wore a custom replica of a 19th-century hairwork bracelet from BPM. This bracelet, originally made from Emily and Anne’s hair, was re-created by Haworth-based Weedian Weaving to honor the literary history of the film’s source material.

“It’s very difficult to choose one item of memorabilia from the collection,” says Dianne. “I like the sewing boxes (called workboxes in the Brontës’ time) because they were clearly heavily used by the sisters and you get a glimpse of their everyday domestic life. At Charlotte’s, there are paper patterns for cutting clothes to sew, the cut ends of the fingers of children’s gloves, a piece of whalebone stay, black silk. A pair of cuffs, and some round, pink pillboxes with pills still inside. Anne stored the pebbles she collected on the beach at Scarborough.”

Bronte Workbox | Photo credit: Bevan Cockerill

The diary papers written by Emily and Anne are equally favourites. “They wrote their first diary paper in November 1834 (when Emily was 16 and Anne was 14) and over the next 11 years, they filled a piece of paper with the specifics of the parsonage day in microscopic script. By the 1840s, Emily and Anne had established rules for the diary paper. They were to be written on Emily’s birthday – July 30 – and on the same day they would open and read the previous “The ones that were written four years ago.”

A diary paper Photo courtesy: Brontë Society

As a portal into how the Brontës lived and with many upcoming exhibitions, talks and film screenings, BPM and Wuthering Heights The marshes, even after being covered in mist, remain alive in the collective memory.