I’VE always found Thornton a charming place, with its higgledy-piggledy cobbled streets, winding snickets and clusters of stone-built houses of all shapes and sizes.
It’s not picture postcard pretty, but for me that is its appeal. It has the feel of a working mill village from the past - it’s a no-nonsense kind of place. The old centre, a conservation site, retains the character of a traditional Pennine village.
From its quirky place names, the Walls of Jericho and Egypt, to the intriguing Coffin End house, it’s a place like no other. And, surrounded by fields and rolling hills, it has lovely rural views.
My friend Ruth and I have been planning a little trip to Thornton for ages, to visit the historic Bell Chapel and the rather cool South Square complex, and last Sunday we finally got there. Our first stop was Thornton’s best known house, which has also been its best kept secret.
Halfway down Market Street is the house where Emily, Charlotte, Branwell and Anne Bronte were born, and where the family lived until they moved to Haworth in 1820. I first visited this house about 20 years ago when it was owned by novelist Barbara Whitehead, who lived there and ran it as a little museum. More recently it has been a cafe, Emily’s.
As the T&A recently reported, the terraced house has been taken on by the Bronte Birthplace Limited which has raised more than £650,000 from crowdfunding and grants, and plans to turn the Grade 2* listed building into an education centre and literary retreat, with a community cafe and holiday lets giving visitors chance to stay in the Brontes’ bedrooms. Renovation work on the 200-year-old property is due to start soon, with the opening planned for January 2025, when Bradford is UK City of Culture.
More than 700 people went along to an open day at the house on Sunday - Charlotte Bronte’s birthday - to learn more about the project. Joining the crowds snaking through the building, we met Nancy Garrs (a terrific turn by actor/writer/storyteller Irene Lofthouse), who told us she came from a cramped house in Westgate, Bradford, one of 12 children born to a shoemaker, and was 13 when she was taken on by the Brontes as a nanny. “I ‘ad me own room ‘ere - no more top and tailin’ with t’other bairns. I were right suited,” smiled Nancy, referring to the little bedroom at the top of the servants’ stairs leading off the scullery.
Nancy bounced the Bronte babies on her knee at the Thornton house, and told them stories in the nursery, before moving with the family to Haworth. She outlived all the Brontes and died aged 82 in 1866. Nancy spent her later years in Bradford Workhouse, where she was quite the celebrity - interviewed by journalists as the last living person to know the famous literary sisters. She is buried in Undercliffe Cemetery.
Sitting in her rocking chair, Nancy gave us an insight into the busy house in Market Street, home to six children, an Irish father and a Cornish mother. We tend to think of Patrick Bronte as an old man, white-haired and blind in later life, but when the family lived in Thornton he was, said Nancy, a red-haired young father, headstrong and passionate.
A short walk from the house is the Old Bell Chapel, where Patrick was curate from 1815-1820 and where the Bronte children were baptised. Ruth and I headed down to the remains of the old chapel. “Thornton: My Happiest Years” is carved, with a portrait of Patrick, in stone on the wall.
The original church of St James, known locally as Bell Chapel, was built in 1612. When the new church was built in 1872, the old chapel fell into disuse. Little of it remains, but the cupola and one wall is intact in the graveyard. The site has been beautifully restored by the Old Bell Chapel Action Group and is well worth a visit.
From there we walked to South Square, a cluster of 19th Century millworkers’ cottages, saved from demolition and renovated as an arts and heritage centre in 1982.
Today the site - one of the region’s last surviving examples of a U-shaped building with courtyard - comprises artists’ studios, a gallery, community spaces, fine art framers, the Watchmaker bar and Plenty at the Square, a delightful vegetarian/vegan cafe where we had a coffee and some delicious rhubarb crumble. Committed to seasonal dishes, reducing food waste and supporting local producers, the cafe runs a picklery and a vegetable exchange.
With menu choices including spring green pancakes, spinach, chickpea and feta pie, and salad nourish bowls, we vowed to go there for lunch next time.
South Square Centre delivers community exhibitions, workshops, a contemporary arts programme and opportunities for local artists. In recent years it has undergone a major renovation, funded by National Heritage Lottery Fund, as part of a longterm project celebrating Thornton’s industrial and Bronte heritage and the 40-year history of the centre as a grassroots arts hub.
From the gallery, there’s a view of the mighty Thornton Viaduct. Built for the railway between Queensbury and Keighley, it’s now Grade 2 listed and appears in an episode of Last of the Summer Wine (the one called ‘Three Men and a Mangle’, apparently).
The Bronte Way, which starts at Oakwell Hall in Birstall and ends at Gawthorpe Hall in Padiham near Burnley, runs through Thornton, with a section of it from the Bronte Birthplace to St Michael and All Angels’ Church in Haworth, where most of the family is buried.
Other walks interlink the four Bronte Stones - each engraved with poems by contemporary female writers. Curated by author Michael Stewart and Bradford Literature Festival, the stones were installed in 2018 to celebrate the bicentenaries of the Bronte sisters.
The Emily Stone, featuring a poem by Kate Bush, is carved into the side of Ogden Kirk; the Anne Stone is in Parson’s Field, behind the Bronte Parsonage Museum, with a poem by Jackie Kay acknowledging a ‘return’ to Haworth for Anne, who is buried in Scarborough and the only sibling not buried in Haworth; and the Charlotte Stone, with a poem by Carol Ann Duffy, is on the outside wall of the Bronte Birthplace. A fourth stone, featuring Jeanette Winterson’s poem for the Bronte family, is in Thornton Cemetery, overlooking Pinch Beck Valley.
The nine-mile Bronte Stones Walk from Thornton to Haworth takes in all four stones. The moorland route includes Ogden Kirk, Denholme Beck and Oxenhope, following the Bronte Way in places. More leisurely is the four-mile Charlotte Bronte Walk around Thornton; starting at St James’ Church, taking in Thornton Hall, the viaduct and Bronte Birthplace.
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