Brontë Society June weekend 2022?

 A number of people have been in touch, particularly members from North America, wondering whether there will be a meet-up in Haworth in the second week of June (Friday 10th/Saturday 11th). The June weekend was usually described as 'AGM weekend', but this year the AGM will be held in the autumn, as it was in 2021. There are no official events planned, but according to information in recent emails to this blog, some members will be meeting unofficially. It appears that Zoom contact, useful during the pandemic, can not substitute for in-the-flesh contact. Please get in touch if you have definite plans. 

Angela Crow-Woods

 Richard Wilcocks writes:

Angela Crow-Woods, who died on 24 February at the age of 86, was until recent years a seemingly tireless member of the Brontë Society who organised events, performed, contributed articles and was known as an expert on Maria Branwell, the mother of the Brontës. Her book on the subject, Miss Branwell’s Companion was published in 2007 and was translated into Italian in the same year.

As 'Doreen Lostock'

Her professional name was simply Angela Crow. Her career on stage began when she played truant from school to play the part of Jane Eyre in a touring production, and when she was still a student at RADA, she won the Gilbert award for comedy, the Tree award for Drama and the Emile Littler award for Outstanding Talent. She was the lead in many theatre productions, and played Lily Smalls (the maid of the Beynons) in an early stage production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood at the New Theatre in London and later at the open air theatre in Regent's Park for the Robert Atkins Company. High-profile television work which lasted for sixty years or so followed. This included Hancock’s Half Hour, Last of the Summer Wine, Grange Hill, Heartbeat and The Royal. She was Doreen Lostock in the early sixties in Coronation Street.

She often contributed as an organiser and a performer at the Brontë Society’s traditional June weekends, often described as ‘AGM weekends’. These were attended by delegates from all over the world. To give examples, in June, 2007, Angela organised and compered a popular session of readings from the Brontës. This was mentioned in the blog report from Brussels delegate Selina Busch:

https://bronteparsonage.blogspot.com/2007/06/june-weekend-2.html 

In the same year, Angela was in Milan to meet Italian friends and to launch her book. Franca Gollini Tiezzi wrote about it here:

 

https://bronteparsonage.blogspot.com/2007/06/bront-event-in-milan.html

As part of the 2008 June weekend, Angela organised a day of events in Thornton (where she lived) which included readings from Charlotte Brontë’s letters by herself and Professor Robert Barnard:

https://bronteparsonage.blogspot.com/2008/06/june-weekend-thornton.html 

In 2011, the Brontë Society organised an excursion to Lothersdale, primarily to take a look at the outside of Stonegappe, the mansion which once belonged to the Sidgwick family, where Charlotte Brontë was an unhappy governess in the summer of 1839. The main part of the excursion was in the church at Kildwick, where I joined Angela in a dramatic ‘recollection’ of the events of that year. Chris Went contributed this account: 

https://bronteparsonage.blogspot.com/2011/06/memorable-excursion.html

In September 2014, Angela was responsible for another event in Thornton, this time centred on Emily’s Café, which is in the Brontë birthplace. Poet Simon Zonenblick showed a preview of his video about Branwell Brontë:

https://bronteparsonage.blogspot.com/2014/09/branwell-at-luddendenfoot.html

And Charlotte Brontë’s birthday was celebrated at the 2016 Mirfield Arts Festival thanks to Angela:

https://bronteparsonage.blogspot.com/2016/09/charlottes-birthday-at-mirfield-arts.html

These are just a few of many examples which show the energy of a member who was a personal friend to many, and an inspiration for the entire membership.

Brontë Society June Weekend 2018

This article is reproduced with the permission of the Brussels Brontë Blog

Helen MacEwan writes:

Several members of the Brussels Brontë Group attended the Brontë Society’s 2018 weekend of events in Haworth, this year celebrating Emily Brontë’s bicentenary. Our group included Guy and Evy Desloovere-Van de Voorde with their 8-month-old son Arthur Branwell – his first visit to the village of the family that inspired his name!

Ann Dinsdale's presentation

After an invitation to join Brontë Society trustees for chat, tea and cake in a restaurant in Main St, the weekend’s events kicked off with a presentation on the Brontë Parsonage Museum, now 90 years old. Ann Dinsdale, Principal Curator, and Jane Sellars, a former Director, talked us through highlights in the Museum’s history. Ann Dinsdale is the author of numerous books including At Home with the Brontës: The History of Haworth Parsonage & Its Occupants and The Brontës at Haworth.

All Things Gothic

After dinner we were regaled by ‘an evening of all things Gothic’, a highly dramatic and hilarious one-woman entertainment by the amazing Lucy Adlington of the History Wardrobe, who commented on – and in some cases modelled – the costumes on show. Her romp through the Gothic in literature was interlarded with readings from the Brontës’ novels and other works such as Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. She is the author of several books on costume history.

Lucy Adlington, The Gothic Lady

The Eccentricities of ‘Woman’s Fantasy’

Saturday, the day of the Society’s AGM, is always packed with events. The first of these was a lecture on The Eccentricities of ‘Woman’s Fantasy’… and Heathcliff by Carol Dyhouse, a social history professor from the University of Sussex. Among other questions she looked at why Heathcliff is so often seen as a romantic hero and how far, if at all, this can be attributed to the novel itself as opposed to reinventions in screen versions of the book.

Carol Dyhouse

Brontë Society Annual General Meeting

From the Gothic heroes of the Brontës’ novels and women’s fantasies to a sermon in the church where their father preached: the Brontë Society weekend certainly offers variety and a range of experiences. On Saturday morning – another tradition of the weekend – was a church service, led by the current Rector of Haworth, dedicated to the Brontës in the (rebuilt) church of St Michaels & All Angels. After lunch it was time for the Society’s AGM. The Society currently has around 1,800 members and employs over 40 staff at the Museum, which has just made a successful bid for significant Arts Council Funding as a National Portfolio Organisation. Possible future projects were discussed, for example the idea of turning a Victorian underground reservoir in Haworth into a centre for women’s writing. The perennial question of when the Museum is to build toilets for visitors also came up – when doesn’t it! At present visitors have to use the ones in the car park, threatened with closure.

The day wound up with a quiz hosted by Lucy Mangan, journalist and co-presenter of the BBC documentary Being the Brontës (March 2016). The competitors included museum staff and Society members.

Private View

Sunday was also a busy day. As usual, the museum opened at 9 a.m. for a private viewing by members. A highlight, continuing from last year which was Branwell Brontë’s bicentenary, is the recreation of Branwell’s bedroom, curated by creative partner Simon Armitage in collaboration with museum staff and the production team of the film To Walk Invisible. The installation, supposed to present the room as it might have been in the late 1830s when Branwell had ambitions to be an artist, features an unmade bed and artworks and other objects scattered in disorder.

The morning programme consisted of Brontë Treasures (a private viewing in the Parsonage library of treasures in the Museum collection) and a talk by me on Charlotte Brontë’s legacy in Belgium, the subject of my new book Through Belgian Eyes. Thus our group and its work were well represented at Haworth this year.

Screening of Wuthering Heights (1992 version)

After lunch more energetic members joined a guided walk across the moors to Ponden Kirk, the rocky outcrop close to Top Withens supposedly the inspiration for Penistone Crag in Wuthering Heights. For those who didn’t feel up to this 9-mile walk there was a screening of the 1992 version of the novel with Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche. A dinner and quiz rounded off the day.

Emily (Chloe Pirrie) at Ponden Kirk - still from the TV film To Walk Invisible

Jack Sharp - inspiration for Heathcliff?

The closing event was an excursion to Halifax on the Monday. After a tour of the Piece Hall, there was a visit to Halifax Minster and the former Holy Trinity Church to view sculptures by Branwell Brontë’s great friend Joseph Leyland. David Glover, President of Halifax Antiquarian Society, gave us a talk on Leyland’s life. Over a splendid tea at Holdsworth House Hotel, he gave another talk on Law Hill School near Halifax, the story of Jack Sharp, a member of a local family who may have inspired the character of Heathcliff, and High Sunderland Hall, a building often cited as a possible inspiration for Wuthering Heights.

I hope that many Brussels Group members will join me for the Brontë Society weekend in Haworth next year (8-9 June) to enjoy a rich programme of events and spend time not just in Haworth but in local places with Brontë connections. 

Opening soon - 'Villette' in Leeds

Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, re-imagined by Linda Marshall-Griffiths, opens in the Courtyard Theatre at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds on Saturday 24 September 2016. A review will appear here soon afterwards, hopefully. This is from the Playhouse's publicity:

"Lucy Snowe, alone and abandoned, boards a boat in search of purpose. 

"Arriving at an archaeological site digging for the remains of the elusive Lady of Villette, she works alongside the beautiful Gin, the prying Beck, the charming Dr John and the remote Professor Paul, though Lucy remains an outsider.

"Absorbed in her work to find a cure for the next pandemic to secure humanity’s future, can she open herself up to the possibility of love and put the bones of the past behind her?

"On the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth, West Yorkshire Playhouse celebrates her unique genius with a daring new adaptation by a fellow Yorkshire writer, Linda Marshall-Griffiths. With echoes of the illness and loss that wracked Brontë’s own life, both novel and play explore the redemptive power of love and the uncertainty of holding on to it."

On the following Thursday (29 September) at 6.30pm, also at the West Yorkshire Playhouse (Other Space), there will be a discussion in the style of a debate - Jane Eyre versus Villette. A similar event took place in Haworth during the AGM weekend in June, some readers of this blog will recall. This time, speakers for Jane Eyre will be Blake Morrison  and Sarah Perry, and speakers for Villette will be Sally Vickers and Ruth Robbins.

For full details of the Brontë Season at the WYP, go to its website here.

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The Story of the Withins Farms

Top Withins - 1920s 

Friday 10 June was the first day of what used to be called either 'AGM Weekend' or 'June Weekend' but which has now been renamed 'Summer Festival'. At 3pm first Steve Woods, then Peter Brears gave their illustrated talk 'The Real Wuthering Heights: The Story of the Withins Farms', which was a bigger and better version of a talk given on the same subject three years ago. It began with a brief reference to the letter from publishers Smith, Elder & Co to Ellen Nussey, who was being asked for clues about locations. They wanted to know what the Brontë Sisters had in mind because they were producing the first illustrated edition of the collected works, and Volume Five (1873) of this was Wuthering Heights along with Agnes Grey. As Ellen Nussey's reply has been lost, we do not know much for sure, but the book included an illustration of Top Withins by E M Wimperis which she seems to have suggested to him, so there is some evidence that it was one of the places in Emily's imagination - along with others.

The talk was the result of years of careful study, and covered Top, Middle and Lower Withins, three farms which made up about a hundred acres, much of it rough pasture and much of it probably never used - too rough perhaps. Most farms in the area were dairy, producing milk, butter and a little cheese. Two hundred years ago this would have been consumed by the many weavers and spinners in the area - and because it was not much of a living, the farmers and their families would have done plenty of carding and spinning themselves. There were some sheep, and about half a dozen cows at each farm.

It would have been an isolated life, with long walks down to Stanbury or Haworth, unpleasant and hazardous in bad weather, especially in heavy snow, and especially for any children on their way to school and back in the later years of the nineteenth century. The ruined Lower Withins was finally demolished in the 1930s ("There were plenty of Brontë enthusiasts taking away souvenirs") and Top Withins was fixed into its present state fairly recently, though it seems to have been still quite substantial in the 1920s.

Dyddgu Pritchard Owens

Sally McDonald writes:

Mrs Dyddgu Pritchard Owens passed away on 12 August.

 

Dyddgu was a truly popular and well known figure in the Society who was at every AGM weekend I can remember until this year, and her absence this year was noticeable. She won friends with her cheery nature and passion for the Brontes and Haworth.  The Society offers deepest sympathies to Dyddgu's family.

Wuthering Heights - a new musical

Adapted from the novel by Emily Brontë

Music, Book and Lyrics by Catherine McDonald

Dates - 11th - 15th February 2014 @ 7:30pm (plus a matinee on Saturday @ 2:30pm)

Venue - The Barons Court Theatre, London.

Tickets - £10 / £8.50 concession

Link - http://www.offwestend.com/index.php/plays/view/10867  

Box Office - 0208 932 4747

About the Writer / Composer

Catherine McDonald completed David Edgar's Playwriting Masters Degree and has enjoyed a number of successes with play scripts and musicals being produced across the country and on ITV1.  Her play Once Upon A Winter is published by Eldridge Editors in the US, and she has recently won the nationwide Mardibooks World War One Short Story competition for her story Homecoming.

Catherine was short-listed for the BBC Writer's Academy for her play The Kittens in the Bag, after which Theatre 503 programmed her short play What Sam Told Me as part of their Rapid Write Rewind night, celebrating the best of their Rapid Response evenings over the past few years.  

Catherine received critical acclaim for her musical adaptation of Peter Pan Never Land at the Edinburgh Fringe, which went on to be performed outdoors in Kensington Gardens, and was then featured on ITV1's Fortune, winning £15,000 to donate to Gt Ormond St Children's Hospital.  

**  Catherine and her theatre company came to Haworth in 2008 and performed her adaptation of Jane Eyre for the Bronte Society AGM weekend, to great applause. This should be well worth seeing!

Catherine McDonald's website: http://catherinemcdonald.org

Playwright - Composer - Author

Read her play: http://www.histage.com/playdetails.asp?PID=2501

Watch this short film: http://vimeo.com/43416368

Kindle Download: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Magwires-Christmas-Ghost-Story-ebook/dp/B00AESMO34/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362056328&sr=8-1

June AGM weekend - Oakwell Hall

‘”The old latticed windows, the stone porch, the walls, the roof, the chimney-stacks, were rich in crayon touches and sepia lights and shades.”

On Tuesday drizzle took the place of sunshine as we disembarked from our coach at Oakwell Hall. The hall was used in 1921 as the location for the silent version of Shirley and is a building which has survived from the late 16^th and 17^th centuries and was almost certainly built in the Elizabethan age by John Batt whose initials appear on the porch. Charlotte Brontë knew one of the Cockill girls who with her two sisters and mother, Hannah, occupied Oakwell from 1830-1865 and ran it as a girls’ boarding school

Charlotte must have been very familiar with the hall because in Shirley, ‘Fieldhead’, the home of the eponymous heroine incorporates many things that can still be seen in the house today:

‘”The brown panelled parlour was furnished in an old style, and with real old furniture. On each side of the high mantelpiece stood two antique chairs of oak.”

Every house with a long history has a ghost story to tell and Oakwell is no different. We were told of unknown figures appearing, of shelves being unscrewed from walls and of the bloody footprint which never disappeared- until the floor was taken up- despite the vigorous efforts of scrubbing brushes and soap and water! Anyone moving from room to room could have been forgiven for thinking that they had been transported back in time for the hall frequently entertains school children, and on that day groups of children, dressed in  Elizabethan style, were happily occupied in interesting looking activities.

They were making lavender bags, writing with quills and one eager little boy told me, as he was concentrating on winding wool round four sticks, that he was making some kind of lucky charm. We saw in the kitchen that the children had prepared vegetables which were in a suspended iron pot over the fire and which they would partake of later from wooden plates.

It was an interesting morning and in these times of cutbacks and talk of closures it is hoped others in years to come will have the same opportunities to enjoy Oakwell Hall. What really made the day for me was to see how deeply the school children were involved in the educational activities there.

June AGM weekend - Excursion to Levens Hall and Silverdale

IMS writes:
After a warm and sunny weekend, full of interesting events, where friendships were renewed and new ones made, members travelled up the A65 - the destination Levens Hall near Kendal. The very understanding coach driver incurred the wrath of an impatient motorist –lights flashing, horn beeping- as he slowed down to enable his passengers to catch a glimpse of the Reverend Carus Wilson’s school building in Cowan Bridge, which the four eldest Brontë girls attended in 1824/5.

Passing over the busy M6 we soon arrived at the Hall- the building of which is divided into three periods. A Pele tower was built firstly in the thirteenth century, the second period was in the sixteenth century when the mediaeval structure was turned into a gentleman’s residence. The last period in the seventeenth century was when the South wing and brew house were added and the house exquisitely furnished. The rooms, resplendent with Elizabethan plasterwork and panelling, contained treasures such as beautiful Charles II gilded brass candle sconces and a George I burr walnut long case clock. There was furniture dating from the William and Mary period to an early nineteenth century. In each room pictures by painters of note, such as Rubens and Peter de Wint, and drawings by Edward Burne Jones, adorned the walls.

Moving around the house it became obvious that there were perhaps some tentative connections with the Brontës. It was thought that Colonel James Grahme - who married, in 1675, Dorothy Howard, one of the maids of honour to Catherine of Braganza and a daughter of the Levens Hall family -  had been born at Norton Conyers. The Graham family still live there today and Charlotte visited when she was governess to the Sidgwick family.

At the hall there is a charcoal drawing and a watercolour by George Richmond, the very same painter who painted Charlotte’s portrait in 1850. It is well known that Charlotte had been thrilled to see, in the flesh, her hero the Duke of Wellington in the Chapel Royal when she was taken there by George Smith. Wellington’s favourite niece, Lady Mary Wellesley, married Sir Charles Bagot of Levens and there were many items relating to Wellington given by him to Mary and in one of the bedrooms is his campaign bed. Many houses of this ilk attract the media and are used for films and television programmes and Levens is no different -  film versions of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Mrs Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters were made at the hall in the nineteen nineties.

Visitors can wander outside through herb gardens and pleached lime tunnels lead to a pond and fountain and in a quiet corner there are headstones where beloved family pets with the names of Tarka, Sheba and Jock are buried. Dominating all these features are the yew trees at various stages of their development into fantastic topiary shapes- the great umbrella dwarfing everything else and apparently requiring the use of scaffolding for trimming.

The next step of the Monday excursion was down narrow country lanes which led to Lindeth Tower in Silverdale and which afforded a wonderful view of Morecambe Bay looking across to Grange over Sands. Mrs Gaskell first visited Grange in 1836 and with her growing family made an annual migration to the seaside and stayed in the Tower House- which was built in 1842.  The Gaskells and other Manchester families who often stayed in Silverdale would, before 1846, travel by train only as far as Lancaster. After that date it would have been possible to get by train to Carnforth- the station made famous by the emotional film Brief Encounter.  A carriage ride would then bring them to Silverdale which, with its sense of isolation and peace, Mrs Gaskell is said to have enjoyed. In 1858 she wrote, “One is never disappointed in coming back to Silverdale”.

It was my first visit to the area and I was not disappointed!

June AGM weekend - Saturday

This year's annual lecture was given not by an academic but by an enthusiastic local historian - Steve Wood. It was accompanied by a fascinating selection of slides, some of which came as a surprise for many members of the audience in the Baptist chapel, an appropriate space for events like this because it is like a compact theatre.

The subject was The History of the Withins Farms, 1567-1930 . Most Society members tramp up to Top Withins at some time, usually in good weather. Steve Wood read a few minds when he suggested that perhaps we should have made good use of the fact that the moors around Haworth and Stanbury were significantly bucolic and that the talk should have taken place on the tops, near the set of restored ruins which are possibly one of the inspirations for Wuthering Heights. But then it would have been awkward for him to show us the old photos, and the drawings.

We saw a set of three farms in various states of repair - not only Top Withins, but Middle Withins and Low Withins as well. Only Top Withins remains, the other two having been demolished. Steve gave us a brief survey of the families which had once survived up there, some of them managing hay meadows and keeping cattle, some of them installing hen coops and pigsties. The animals had to come in with the human inhabitants, separated by walls and doors. We saw the careful plans which Steve had drawn. It would have been almost comfortable in winter in the bothy, near the beasts' heat. In one photo, oatcakes could be seen, draped over a beam to dry. They lived mainly on porridge and oatcakes, it seems. Even the dogs were served porridge.

The 'upkeep' of Top Withins farm, if it can be called that, has often been insensitive and neglectful: Keighley Town Council once made interventions, cut stones were stolen - a Yorkshire tradition going back to the Dissolution of the Monasteries and before - and various charitable parties turned up to do something, notably a class of schoolchildren from Barnsley. At one time, it was covered with names and graffiti, not the work of early members of the Brontë Society, I hope and trust. The sycamores have lasted well. Yorkshire Water bureaucrats are currently the keepers: they own just about everything on the moors around here, and have strong views on the keeping of farm animals, because of concerns about water pollution. Sheep have escaped their gaze.

There was plenty of it left when Sylvia Plath drew it, which shows the extent of the recent deterioration. The views are still stunning, but will change soon when tall new wind turbines appear on the horizon. It is, of course, still a popular tourist destination, and the paths are well looked after. Most walkers today might wear fleeces and anoraks - not so a century ago. One photo showed a group of mostly male members of the Brontë Society looking into the farm's open windows dressed in dark suits and bowler (derby) hats. The women with them were wearing long Edwardian dresses a couple of inches up from the turf and huge, elaborate headgear. They had style in those days.

June AGM weekend, Friday

The weather was unbelievably warm and windless. All the events should be held out in the open - possibly in the meadow behind the Parsonage - or so it was often said, humorously. All of the delegates were full to the brim with good humour. Here's a slideshow of just a few of them: