Walking the Invisible

by Michael Stewart

  Charlotte would have known about the Luddites both from her father and her school teacher Miss Wooler. And, according to Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte also researched the Luddite attacks by reading copies of the Leeds Mercury newspaper. The interests of the media and the mill owners were aligned. Those who owned the means of production and those who owned the method of disseminating new events shared the same class, ate at the same table, drank at the same clubs.

  The leader of the Luddites in Shirley is Moses Barraclough, and he is described as having ‘cat-like trustless eyes’. But George Mellor, the real-life inspiration for Moses, who led the attack on the mill, was not an illiterate yob; he was well travelled and self-educated, with socially progressive views. Born in 1789, the same year as the French Revolution began, he was a proficient cropper by 1812, but he soon saw the value of his trade drop from more than £12 million to around £1 million per annum. At the same time, he witnessed a series of disastrous harvests. Mellor saw Luddism as a vehicle to improve the lot of his people.

  The failed attack on Cartwright’s mill and the death of two workers set off riots all over the country. And it was following the death of his close friend John Booth that Mellor was probably tipped over the edge. Shortly afterwards, he took the disastrous decision to escalate the campaign, not through the destruction of machines but through the destruction of men: first, a successful assassination of neighbouring mill owner William Horsfall, who had called the Luddites ‘cowards’, then the failed assassination of William Cartwright, who managed to dodge bullets from two assassins. Mellor was hanged at York for his crimes, along with sixteen other Luddites.

  William Horsfall’s catchphrase was ‘I’ll ride up to my saddle girth in Luddite blood’. He was shot four times on Black Moor Foot Lane. The assassins shot his balls off, but he didn’t die immediately. He made it to the pub down the road, where he bled to death a few hours later. How different the legacy of the Luddites would be had they remained confined to attacks on property instead of people.

  As I walk away from the church, I can hear the roar of the M62 motorway in the distance. My journey now takes me over the footbridge of the motorway, through Bailiff Bridge and Norwood Green, leading me home to Thornton. I reckon I’ve done close to twenty miles, and my feet are aching. I’ve worn the wrong boots. My regular walking boots were still wet from the day before, so I donned the emergency boots that I’d bought from a cheap camping shop. Up to this point, I’ve never gone more than six or seven miles in them. I have learnt that they are not meant for long distances.

  As I pass the Old Bell Chapel, I see Marje Wilson, the woman who wrote The Brontë Way guidebook. She volunteers here once a week and helps with the upkeep of the space. I stop to introduce myself and ask her about her project.

  ‘I know who you are and where you live,’ she says, rather ominously. ‘Your house is haunted. Isabel. That’s the name of the ghost.’

  ‘I’ve not met her yet,’ I say. I tell her about my book and ask her how she came to write the guidebook. She tells me that it came about because of a chance encounter with another writer at a youth hostel in Donegal, who advised her to self-publish. She wrote her guide, then got back in touch with this writer, who asked her to send it to him.

  ‘He had it six months. Sent it back by post. He said, “Sorry, Marje, I haven’t been very well and haven’t been able to do anything with this.”’

  She tells me that she then approached the Ramblers’ Association to see if they would publish it. The association liked her book but when they had their next meeting, the writer she had originally approached was there.

  ‘He was the first person to speak, and he said, “I’m thinking of publishing a book called The Brontë Way.” And this bloke from the Ramblers’ Association said, “That’s strange because we’ve just accepted some material from Marje Wilson.” Two and a half years later, I was in Haworth and I saw Brontë Way by this writer in a bookshop.

  ‘I made no money from my book. All the profits went to the Right to Roam campaign. We won a lot of access and opened up the land for walkers.’

  ‘You did a good thing,’ I say, and leave her to weed the graves.

  As I sit at my kitchen table, drinking black tea and soaking my feet in a bowl of hot water, I reflect back on the past few years and this project that has obsessed me. How long? Four, five, six years? Maybe as long as ten years. Before I began, the act of writing and the act of walking were two very different activities in my mind. But somehow, over the course of this project, they have become the same thing. Taking a line of carbon over the page, treading feet across the land, the same rhythm, the same head space, the same solitary place.

  In Common People, Anita Sethi writes about how the English countryside excludes people from certain class and cultural backgrounds. I feel very much the same about England’s rural spaces. They are political. There is still a class divide between town and country. In 1932, a group of about four hundred walkers organised a mass trespass of Kinder Scout in Derbyshire. The walkers were made up of mill workers and miners, and there were violent scuffles with gamekeepers. The event began a campaign for access to rural spaces that culminated in the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act in 2000.

  The act, which gives walkers the right to travel through common land and open country, is a great triumph. But still, many so-called custodians of our rural spaces deliberately neglect their legal duties to manage and maintain access: allowing pathways to become overgrown; letting cattle tramp up rights of way, turning them into impassable swamps; blocking stiles with barbed wire; ploughing up footpaths. And so much of our moorland is still taken up with grouse shooting and is restricted, dogs forced to be put on leads, birds of prey shot, heather burnt, weasels and stoats trapped.

  Emily found a merlin out on her moors, and it became a pet. She would not find a merlin on the moors today. Nor would she find a hen harrier, a bird that should be commonplace but is now threatened with extinction. England has sufficient habitat to support three hundred hen harrier pairs, yet in 2019 it hosted only twelve successful nests. What should be a diverse space is a monoculture. Some of the moors around Haworth are policed by gamekeepers riding 4x4 jeeps, carrying rifles, patrolling the land like soldiers not rural workers. I’ve had several run-ins with gamekeepers who operate more like goons, one of them pointing his rifle in my face and threatening me.

  In his book Inglorious, Mark Avery outlines this conflict on our uplands. He writes about how Walshaw Moor, close to Haworth, was bought by millionaire businessman and grouse shooter Richard Bannister in 2002. It became a scene of dispute between Natural England and his estate. Natural England thought the estate was acting illegally and in conflict with the conservation of nature. They wrote to explain that the estate had breached their agreement and charged it with forty-five offences, including thirty incidences of moor gripping (installing draining channels), the construction of five tracks and five car parks, the creation of two ponds by peat extraction, and the installation of shooting butts. They were also accused of damaging the moor and unnecessary burning, which could contribute to the destruction of two-thirds of heather moorland in England. The criminal court case was scheduled for the summer of 2012. It was set to be a landmark trial that would have massive implications for other grouse-shooting sites. But, surprisingly, Natural England reached a settlement with the Walshaw Moor Estate, and the criminal case was dropped. Why was this agreement reached? The details have never been released to the public.

  Shortly afterwards, in October 2012, the RSPB sent a complaint to the European Commission over the case and its wider implications. This complaint is still running. Richard Benyon, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs minister involved in sorting out the dispute, is himself the owner of a grouse moor. So far, the case has cost the taxpayer more than a million pounds. The valleys below the moor, and the towns there, have been victims of severe flooding caused in great part by the way the estate has managed the land. Hebden Bridge
, Mytholmroyd and Todmorden have all suffered floods that have caused millions of pounds’ worth of damage. We are still a long way from a rural space that is as diverse as it should be or as accessible to those who pay for its upkeep as we have a right to demand.

  I top up my cup and swirl my feet in the now tepid water. I’ve tramped the north of England in search of the landscapes that inspired the Brontës. I’ve traipsed through mud, clambered up steep cloughs, endured unrelenting rain. My journey has taken me to places that have been drastically transformed from how they would have appeared to the siblings, but also to places that are largely unchanged. Modern Scarborough would not be to Anne’s tastes, but Branwell would find much of Broughton the same.

  As I stare down at my bruised and battered feet, I ask myself, to what extent are we products of the places we live? Would Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne have written the same poems and stories had they lived in London, let’s say, or even been writers at all? The peculiar conditions of their upbringing combined with the landscape that surrounded them must have shaped them just as surely as a potter shapes clay. They are, as far as I know, unique in world literature: four siblings who all became published writers, three world acclaimed. When we launched the Brontë Stones project at the Bradford Literature Festival in July 2018, people came from all four corners of the globe to see the stones in situ and walk in the footsteps of the Brontës. It is hard to imagine another literary equivalent.

  Every day, I see literary tourists standing on the same steps they would have played on as children or leaning against the fireplace near where they were born to have their photographs taken, having made a pilgrimage that, to them, is as important as a visit to Mecca. I can only take inspiration from this and be awed afresh by their legacy. When Charlotte wrote ‘what author would be without the advantage of being able to walk invisible?’, she was still unknown to the world, writing under the pseudonym Currer Bell. She is now, after William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, probably the best-known English writer of all time. Her other sisters are not far behind her. Branwell is still waiting for his day in the sun.

  I pass the place of their birth every day, walking my dog or making a trip to the shops, and it has become just another part of the scenery. Another house in a street full of houses. But some days, it stops me in my tracks. I look up at the plaque outside and think, Wow, what you all did, that was really something else.

  Maps

  The Charlotte Brontë Walk

  The Brontë Stones Walk

  The Emily Brontë Walk

  The Anne Brontë Walk

  The Wandering Bard Walk

  The Charlotte Brontë Walk

  A straight-forward short loop across the hills around Thornton. The route starts in the village at St James’ Church, opposite the site of the old Bell Chapel where Patrick Brontë worked. The route takes in Thornton Hall, Hanging Fall, the Brontë Birthplace and Thornton Viaduct, and has some great views over the valley. The walk is on good paths that are generally dry.

  ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me.’

  Distance: 4 miles (6.3km)

  Ascent: 175m

  Difficulty: Easy

  Public Transport: Thornton is served by the 607 bus from Bradford and 67 between Bradford and Keighley.

  Parking: Free parking along B145 by St James’ Church in Thornton.

  Refreshments: Refreshments: There are various pubs and cafés in Thornton, including the dog-friendly New Inn, the Plenty at the Square café at South Square, and of course Emily’s at the Brontë Birthplace itself.

  Charlotte Brontë was born in an unassuming house in the middle of Thornton. No 74 Market Street was built in 1802, when Thornton was still a small village with just over twenty buildings, but it quickly grew during the early nineteenth century. The house had four bedrooms and three staircases and served as the parsonage for the village’s church, located out near Thornton Hall. At the time, Market Street was the main road to Bradford and there were no buildings on the opposite side of the street, just open fields leading down into the valley. Patrick and Maria Brontë moved to Thornton in 1815 with their two young daughters, one year old Maria and three month old Elizabeth. Over the course of the next five years, Maria gave birth to Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne. In a letter written in 1835, Patrick Brontë said, ‘I’ve never quite been well since I left Thornton. My happiest days were spent there’.

  The route starts on the B6145 by St James’ Church at the east end of Thornton village. A gate opposite leads into the old graveyard and the site of the Bell Chapel where Patrick Brontë preached 1815-1820. Rejoin the road heading east and turn right down the next track. By the gates to Thornton Hall, bear left through a small gate and follow the clear path down the field to Pinch Beck. Join a walled lane by the site of the old corn mill at Thornton Mill and follow Corn Mill Lane to its end.

  Milling wheel at Thornton Corn Mill

  Thornton Hall is a medieval hall that is thought to be a possible inspiration for Thornfield Hall, home of Mr Rochester, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. In the 16th century the hall was owned by Sir Richard Tempest, a knight of Henry VIII. There would have been a view of the hall from the parsonage at that time. The fireplace was rebuilt in the 19th century and designed by William Morris. A set of stocks dated 1638 are in the grounds.

  Turn right on Cockin Lane, but be careful of the traffic coming quickly round the blind bend here. Almost immediately turn left into Low Lane where a pavement leads past the site of Low Lane Pit (now Hole Bottom Beck Yard). Turn right at an unsigned footpath beyond, where a path leads along the edge of the field from a rough stile. Reaching a stone stoop, turn left up the line of an old wall onto the hillside of Hanging Fall, where there are great views back across towards Thornton.

  At the top of Hanging Fall, turn right along the wall then skirt round the foot of Rabbit Hill, which is peppered with myriad rabbit holes. Beyond, climb steeply back to the wall at the top of the slope and follow a clear path along the crest, soon walking along the top of a judd wall built from the spoil of Fall Top Quarries. At the end do not join the quarry’s vehicle track, but stay on a path to the right past another fine viewpoint overlooking The Towers observatory and chimney of the adjacent fireclay works. This eventually bears right down some steps to reach Brow Lane on the edge of Clayton.

  Turn right briefly down Brow Lane only as far as a narrow gate on the left opposite the drive to Fox Brow. A path leads down the fields and then along the wall beside the former railway line, before crossing it at a broad stone bridge. Head straight across the rough track beyond to reach a stile in the wall behind Station House. Follow the narrow path to the end, then turn right on a track that soon becomes the Great Northern Railway Trail by the site of the former Queensbury Station.

  Queensbury Station was oddly located at the junction of three railway lines and had separate platforms on each side of the large triangle of lines. There was also a three-arch viaduct at the north end that was pulled down in 1990. Though distant from the hilltop village of Queensbury, local mill owners successfully petitioned for a station here to transport their goods. The adjacent 1.5 mile Queensbury Tunnel was constructed in the 1870s and linked the station through to Holmesfield and Halifax. Though closed in the 1950s, there are ongoing plans to re-open the tunnel as part of the cycle network.

  The Great Northern Railway Trail follows the line of the old railway between Queensbury and Thornton stations. At Queensbury Station another branch forks off through the Queensbury Tunnel towards Holmesfield and Halifax. The entrance can be seen via a brief diversion off to the left, but the main route bends right past John Dalby’s Grave. Beyond Ashby House, head straight across Cockin Lane. Soon after passing under a high bridge, bear right through a gate. The trail continues above High Birk Beck.

  The headstone of John Dalby that stands by the Great Northern Railway Trail near the site of the former Queensbury Station is something of a mystery. John Dalby worked for the rival Midla
nd Railway for over 50 years, first as a clerk and later a canvasser espousing the virtues of his company over its rival, so its location here is more the product of accident than intent. John was born in Clayton in 1817 and was working as a porter when he married a local farmer’s daughter, Ann Greenwood, in 1848. He died three years after her, in 1893, and was buried in St John’s Church in Clayton, but some of the gravestones were dumped here subsequently. Most were disposed of, but perhaps John’s lay hidden under the brambles until it was rescued and resurrected more recently. A contemporary of the Brontë children, his ordinary life is ultimately commemorated in an unlikely fashion.

  John Dalby’s headstone

  Continue straight across Headley Lane, following the railway onto Thornton Viaduct, a vast structure crossing the broad valley of Pinch Beck. At the end, turn right around the school to emerge on the B6145 at the west end of Thornton. Follow the road right for 300m, then bear left up Kipping Lane into the old heart of the village. Market Street continues past the Brontë Birthplace, where the Charlotte Stone is engraved in the side of the wall of the café. Continue along the road for another 500m, then turn right down a signed path beside St James’ Church to return to your starting point.

  Thornton Viaduct is an impressive twenty-arch structure carrying the Great Northern Railway 120 feet above Pinch Beck. It was a part of a very expensive line built between Queensbury Station and Keighley whose construction was delayed; its hilly nature earned it the nickname the Alpine Route. The viaduct was completed in the 1870s and incorporates a rare S-shape into its design. The last train crossed it on November 8th 1963, but it has more recently been opened as part of the Great Northern Railway Trail.