Haworth, Bingley, Saltaire and Hebden Bridge

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We left Bernie at home this morning and Janet, Jill and I headed off to the Brontë Parsonage Museum. I can't think why Bernie wasn't interested in that???! Just before we entered the museum, Jill received a text to say that her nephew had arrived at Keighley station and was ready to be picked up. Jill headed back to the house to press Bernie into service for a drive to Keighley, while Janet and I proceeded with our visit to the museum.

The Brontës are arguably the world's most famous literary family and Haworth Parsonage, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, was their home from 1820 to 1861. Earlier this year I read Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre (1847), Emily's Wuthering Heights (1847), and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) which were written in the parsonage over a hundred and fifty years ago! Haworth is the second most visited literary site in the UK, with Stratford-upon-Avon being the most visited.

The museum houses an impressive collection of material devoted to the life and times of Charlotte, Emily and Anne and both their father, the Revd. Patrick Brontë, and brother Branwell who also saw their own works in print. The museum is very lucky to have had a number of private collections of Brontë memorabilia bequeathed to it over the years enabling them to expand their displays.

After a quick lunch at home the five of us piled into the car for a scenic drive around the Yorkshire Dales. Our first stop was at Bingley to see the Bingley five-rise lock staircase, the most spectacular feature of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The locks open directly from one to another, with the top gate of one forming the bottom gate of the next. This unique five-rise staircase has a total fall of 60 feet. Unfortunately there were no narrow boats about and we did not get to see the locks in action.

Having some difficulty finding the locks we had to resort to asking some pedestrians for directions. Hmmn, by the time we asked for directions they were literally at the bottom of the hill from where we were!! After parking the car we arrived at the locks at about the same time as the group on foot. We had a bit of chat with them and they told us they had been in Australia in January ... in Gippsland, no less. What are the chances?!

Our next stop was the model village of Saltaire, founded in 1853 by Sir Titus Salt, a leading industrialist in the Yorkshire woollen industry. The name of the village is a combination of the founder's surname and the name of the river. Salt moved his business (five separate mills) from Bradford to this site near Shipley partly to provide better arrangements for his workers than could be had in Bradford and partly to site his large textile mill by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the railway.

Salt built neat stone houses for his workers (a big improvement on the slums of Bradford), wash-houses with tap water, bath-houses, a hospital and an institute for recreation and education, with a library, a reading room, a concert hall, billiard room, science laboratory and a gymnasium. The village had a school for the children of the workers, almshouses, allotments, a park and a boathouse, but NO PUBS!! Titus was a staunch teetotaller and in a rather patriarchal fashion, tried to impose his own strict moral code on his workforce.

Today, Saltaire a UNESCO World Heritage Site which means that the government has a duty to protect the site. The buildings belonging to the model village are individually listed, with the highest level of protection given to the Congregational church (since 1972 known as the United Reformed Church) which is a Grade I listed building.

From Saltaire we drove back through Keighley and Haworth to Hebden Bridge a small village on the Yorkshire side of the Pennine Hills. Historically, Hebden Bridge was yet another small mill town producing wool and woollen goods. By the end of the sixties, the town was in bad shape with many of its shops empty and blocks of terraced houses being pulled down. The seventies and eighties saw the village reborn as somewhat of a mecca for artists, writers, photographers, musicians, alternative practitioners, teachers, green and New Age activists (a la Nimbin in Queensland!). More recently, wealthy yuppy types have started to move in.

And back to Haworth for some dinner at the Old Hall Hotel, before getting sucked in to watching a countdown of the World's Favourite Comedy Characters. One by one everyone retired to bed until it was only Bernie and me waiting with baited breath to see who would be on top of the list. There was an awful lot of English comedy that we had never seen, but classics that we were familiar with included: Brian's mother (Life of Brian), Black Adder, Frank Spencer and Captain Mainwaring (Dad's Army). There was also a handful of US favourites that we knew: Seinfeld, Earl (My Name is Earl) and Frasier to name a few. And in number one place ... Basil Fawlty. We had to stay up until midnight for that!!

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