The town of Haworth in Yorkshire is the home of the Bronte Parsonage which was the home of the Bronte sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Their home has now been turned into the
Bronte Parsonage Museum (this is a very informative website by the way).
Haworth is in the Pennines and was a crowded industrial town when the Brontes lived there. You can still get the atmosphere of the place with its steep cobbled main street and higgledy-piggledy stone houses and shops covered in inscribed weathering patterns and damp green mould. If you can though, it's an even better idea to do a big walk in the hills themselves to get a feel of the rough weather of the times in the scraggy wind-swept trees.
The church is where the Bronte's father worked, the Reverend Patrick Bronte. You can see the family stone inscribed with their names inside the chapel - their lives cut short tragically early but sadly not uncommon for the times. Emily died from tuberculosis aged 30, just 3 months after her brother Branwell at 31. Anne died aged 29, 5 months after her sister. The Reverend was left with just one of his children - Charlotte - but she survived just 6 years more, dying at the age of 39 in the early stages of pregnancy.
Charlotte and Emily are ranked amongst the world's finest writers. Anne is a powerful underrated author, and their father and brother were also published authors. To have two great writers in one family is rare, but to find several writers in one household is unique in the history of literature.
The rooms at the Parsonage are filled with their furniture, clothes and personal possessions, allowing us some insight into their lives (though quite what we are picking up when we see these things would be an interesting topic of discussion). You can also see on display the miniature manuscripts that the Brontes made and wrote as children - they tell wonderfully textured stories about their imaginary world and the lives of its inhabitants. Emily's drawings of her pets are fresh and brilliantly talented.
If you want to read an up-to-date book about the Brontes, look out for The Bronte Myth by Lucasta Miller. It's a fascinating read about the myths that have built up around the Brontes over the years, and deals with the many films of the books and wonders about the cultural value of some of the tat you see for sale in the town (some of it is quite depressing such as the 'Villette iced bun' - made me shudder and cringe).
The book is as much about the impossible art of biography as it is about the Brontes themselves. Their father is reassessed and given a much kinder aspect than the damning and it seems rather unreliable account given by Elizabeth Gaskell in her biography of Charlotte - and it makes you want to go back and read the original novels to see them with fresh eyes which to me is what cultural tourism should be all about.
