The Wandering Bard Walk
A wonderfully varied trek from the Calder Valley, where Branwell Bronte worked at Luddenden Foot Station, over the tops to his family home in Haworth. The route takes in rich woodlands, open moors, lively brooks and of course many pubs.
‘Amid the worlds wide din around I hear from far a solemn Sound That says “Remember Me!”’ (taken from Branwell’s Luddenden Foot notebook)
Distance: 10½ miles (17km)
Ascent: 520
Public Transport: Bus 500 runs hourly from Haworth to Hebden Bridge. Buses 590 and 592 run regularly from Hebden Bridge to Luddenden Foot.
Parking: Pay car parks in Haworth. Free car park by canal in Luddenden Foot, in Oxenhope and at Jerusalem Farm.
On April 1 1841, Branwell Brontë was promoted from his post in Sowerby Bridge to the position of clerk-in-charge of the railway at Luddenden Foot. He was paid £130 a year and lodged at nearby Brearley Hall. He befriended Francis Grundy, a young railway engineer whose descriptions of Branwell (provided forty years later) are responsible for the belief that this period proved his downfall. In fact, it was a very creative period for him with the first of many of his poems being published in the Halifax Guardian under his favourite pseudonym, Northangerland. He spent a lot of time exploring the countryside of the the Calder Valley, so much so that in March 1842 he was dismissed for neglecting his duties.
The route starts by the old station in Luddenden Foot, of which there is now little sign, but a statue of Branwell Brontë stands alongside Station Road nearby. Return to the main road, following it right for a few yards to some steps cutting up onto Danny Lane. At the next bend turn left down some steps and join a path along an old pipeline through Roebucks Wood that passes a series of brick air raid shelters for the mill that used to stand below. Continue along Luddenden Brook to emerge on a quiet road. At the bend, continue ahead on a snicket, then go briefly right to the site of Luddenden Corn Mill, where a path cuts left back to follow the stream again. At the road, turn left to reach the Lord Nelson Inn at the heart of charming Luddenden.
The Lord Nelson was built in 1634 as a private dwelling, then served as the Black Swan until the Battle of Trafalgar. Branwell regularly drank here while working in Luddenden Foot and Branwell enjoyed being caught up in the society of local writers and artists. He and friends, such as poets William Dearden and William Heaton and sculptor Joseph Bentley Leyland, formed a sort of informal society, meeting here as well as the Anchor and Shuttle at Luddenden Foot (now the site of the post office). Luddenden Library was housed in the Lord Nelson’s Upper Chamber between 1776 and 1917, though Branwell is not recorded as being a member.
Ramsons (or wild garlic) growing in Roebucks Wood
Head through the churchyard opposite the Lord Nelson and turn left just before a bridge over the stream. A clear path follows the left bank of Luddenden Brook all the way to Booth, passing the sites of a number of the valley’s old mills before turning into a metalled road. Turn left up the hill at the end, then go right up some steps opposite the old school. Reaching another lane, follow it right to Jerusalem Farm, where there are public toilets near the car park.
The Boggart’s Chair stands in the far corner of St Mary’s Church. It is actually the oldest of four fonts, but was removed to the garden of Ellen Royd House when the church was attacked during the Civil War. It was only recognised in 1902, by which time it had acquired its new folkloric name.
The Boggart’s Chair
Follow the main track down from the Jerusalem Farm car park to cross Wade Bridge, and take the higher of two paths heading right through Wade Wood. At the next junction turn left, then go right at a sign, climbing steeply to the top of the wood. Head diagonally across the fields beyond and turn left up to Lower Saltonstall after the last stile. Follow the road right past the Cat i’th Well pub, then turn left up some steps immediately over Kell Brook. Climb steadily to reach a vehicle track near New Mill, following it right as it zigzags up into the village. Looking back in places, you catch sight of the white-painted Cat Rocks on the hillside opposite.
Caty Well, a seventeenth-century stone cistern alongside the pub, is thought to be a corruption of St Catherine’s Well, named after St Catherine of Alexandria. The painted rocks on the hill above are known as Cat Rocks as, from the right angle, they appear rather cat-like. It is said Robin Hood began the custom of painting the rocks when he hid out in a priest hole in the pub and stashed some of his money near the rocks. However, it’s more likely they were painted to commemorate the many Liverpudlian orphans who died in the mills of Wainstalls. They lived at St Aidan’s Mission and some are buried at nearby Dean Chapel.
The white-painted Cat Rocks
Lower Saltonstall was the birthplace of Richard Saltonstall, a sixteenth-century MP and Mayor of London who famously left £100 to the poor of Halifax. The name Saltonstall refers to a ‘farmstead near the willows’.
Turn left along the road in Wainstalls, passing St Aidan’s Mission before turning right at a stile beyond the stream. Fork left up the side of the next fenceline, following it past Moorfield Farm, then cutting diagonally right across a field. Turn left up a wide track, then go left over the second stile on the left, from which a path leads past some old containers and young plantations. Fork left up the low dam wall of Leadbeater Dam and follow it right, crossing the other path again to reach the larger Haigh Cote Dam, a fine lunch spot unless it is particularly windy.
Leadbeater and Haigh Cote Dams were constructed in 1835 by the Cold Edge Dam Company to supply ten mills in the Wainstalls and Luddenden area, who paid rents for the water. It is topped up by a conduit from Warley Moor Reservoir and the name comes from Leadbeater and Stansfield, the company who constructed the dams.
Follow the right-side of Haigh Cote Dam to a stile before the water ski club building leading down onto the track below. Turn left along the track, passing a couple of farms before climbing up to Cold Edge Road. Head straight across the front of the old Withens Hotel and follow the track onto the moor. Turn left by the next fenceline, crossing Skirden Clough and following a fenceline across Ovenden Moor. Beyond the huge new wind turbines, drop steeply down into beautiful Ogden Clough.
Climb up beside the rocks of Ogden Kirk and turn left along the top. Hambleton Lane leads a broad route up onto the top of Thornton Moor, from where there are great views over Halifax, Bradford and Keighley.
From the top of Thornton Moor, continue along the well-defined path as it descends towards Oxenhope and Haworth is glimpsed for the first time. Go through a gate over the conduit at the bottom, then bear left at a sign, following the Brontë Way down the hill towards Leeming Reservoir. The sometimes boggy path runs parallel to an old walled track, then goes straight on across another conduit to descend into the trees near the reservoir.
A curlew, whose distinctive trill is commonly heard on Thornton Moor in early summer
Emerging on a path at the bottom, turn left across the stream. At the next junction, descend right to cross another bridge and join a narrow walled pathway. At the end, follow the track right to the corner of Leeming Reservoir, where a signed path leads straight on down the slope. Turn right at the bottom and join Jew Lane running delightfully along Leeming Brook.
The bright blue valve tower at Leeming Reservoir
Jew Lane is thought to come from the Old English ceo (or chew), referring to a hollow.
Jew Lane continues all the way down to the B6141, which you follow left along the stream into Oxenhope. Turn right soon after an old chimney, following Yate Lane to its end. Turn left down Dark Lane and head straight across the main road. Turn right on the first bend, passing Wilton House and rejoining the stream, now Bridgehouse Beck. Cross the stream, but ignore the Brontë Way as it continues across the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. Instead stay by the stream and soon join a track past the water works.
The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway is a single track branch line that was extended to Oxenhope due to persistence from l
ocal mill owners as Haworth was originally planned as the terminus. The line was closed in 1962 after the Beeching Report, but re-opened in 1968 as a volunteer-operated heritage railway specialising in serving real ale on-board and it thrives to this day.
Oxenhope is one of the most unspoilt villages in West Yorkshire, its grey terraces climbing across the hillsides of the Leeming Water. Rather than one village it is really a conglomeration of several hamlets, including Uppertown, Lowertown, Leeming, Shaw and Marsh. The name Oxenhope means ‘valley of the oxen’, referring to a time when it was part of the estate of Bradford Manor. Oxenhope only became the village’s name when it was adopted by the station built as the terminus of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway in 1867.
By North Ives Barn, bear right and cross Bridgehouse Beck again. Follow a lovely path along its right bank until it climbs up to North Ives Bottom. Turn left, passing in front of the farm and descending a narrow path to the ruin of Far North Ives. Carry straight on, rejoining the right bank of the stream. The path leads into fields, which you follow the bottom edge of all the way into Haworth.
Reaching Brow Road, turn left, then follow Station Road right to Haworth Station. A path leads left in front of the station and high over the railway. At the end continue straight on up the cobbles of Butt Lane. Carry on across the B6142, joining Haworth’s Main Street near the Fleece Inn. After 100 yards you can divert left down Lodge Street, a beautiful dead-end square where you’ll find the old Masonic Lodge. Continue up the hill to the Black Bull, one of Branwell’s many hangouts, and turn left past the church to reach the end of the route at the Brontë Parsonage Mueum.
Branwell was an enthusiastic member of the Masonic Lodge in Haworth in his early twenties, acting as organist, junior warden and secretary before he left town in 1840.
Branwell returned to the Parsonage in Haworth in 1842 and by the end of the year had secured a position as tutor at Thorp Green, near York, where his sister Anne worked. He was dismissed in 1845 after an alleged affair with his employer’s wife, and sank into a deep alcoholic depression for the last three years of his life. Despite his early precocious talent, Branwell died unrecognised and unfulfilled, but his personality, imagination, and ultimate self-destruction are integral elements in the Brontë story.
The original Parsonage in Haworth
Bibliography
Throughout my journey, The Brontës (Abacus, 2010) by Juliet Barker has been my constant companion, as has The Oxford Companion to the Brontës (2018). Early on, I found inspiration in Ann Dinsdale and Mark Davis’s In the Footsteps of the Brontës (Amberley, 2013). I’ve read many other books along the way. Here are some of them:
By the Brontës
Novels:
Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey (1847), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
Charlotte Brontë, The Professor (posthumously published, 1857), Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), Villette (1853)
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
Poetry:
Anne, Charlotte, Emily Brontë, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846)
Branwell Brontë, poems published in the Bradford Herald, Halifax Guardian and Leeds Intelligencer (1841–47)
Patrick Brontë, Winter Evening Thoughts (1810), Cottage Poems (1811), The Rural Minstrel (1813)
The Cottage in the Wood and The Maid of Killarney are included in Brontëana, ed. Joseph Horsfall Turner (1898)
Collected Poems:
Anne Brontë, The Poems of Anne Brontë, ed. Edward Chitham (1979)
Branwell Brontë, The Poems of Patrick Branwell Brontë, ed. Victor A. Neufeldt (1990)
Charlotte Brontë, The Poems of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Victor A. Neufeldt (1985)
Emily Brontë, The Poems of Emily Brontë, ed. Derek Roper with Edward Chitham (1995)
Biographies
Juliet Barker, The Brontës (Abacus, 2010)
Edward Chitham, A Life of Emily Brontë (Amberley, 1987)
Edward Chitham, A Life of Anne Brontë (Blackwell, 1991)
Stevie Davies, Emily Brontë: Heretic (The Women’s Press, 1998)
Daphne du Maurier, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (Virago, 1960)
Samantha Ellis, Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life (Chatto & Windus, 2017)
Sophie Franklin, Charlotte Brontë Revisited (Saraband, 2016)
Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857)
Lyndall Gordon, Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (Chatto & Windus, 1994)
Claire Harman, Charlotte Brontë: A Life (Penguin, 2015)
Adelle Hay, Anne Brontë Reimagined (Saraband, 2020)
John Lock and Canon Dixon, A Man of Sorrow: The Life, Letters and Times of the Revd. Patrick Brontë, 1771–1861 (Nelson, 1965)
Claire O’Callaghan, Emily Brontë Reappraised (Saraband, 2018)
William Scruton, The Brontës (Arthur Dobson, 1968)
Books about the Luddites
Lionel Munby, The Luddites: And Other Essays (1971)
Robert Reid, Land of Lost Content: The Luddite Revolt, 1812 (Penguin, 1988)
Malcolm Thomis, The Luddites: Machine-Breaking in Regency England (David & Charles, 1970)
John Wheatley, Enoch’s Hammer (2019)
Miscellaneous
Mark Avery, Inglorious: Conflict in the Uplands (Bloomsbury, 2015)
Juliet Barker, The Brontës: A Life in Letters (Viking, 1997)
W. Greenhalgh, Broughton-in-Furness and the Duddon Valley: A Guide and History (1989)
Allan and Andrea Pentecost, The Brontës in the English Lake District (Cloudberry, 2016)
Michael Steed, A Brontë Diary (Dalesman, 1990)
John Sutherland, Is Heathcliff a Murderer?: Puzzles in 19th-Century Fiction (Oxford, 1996)
John Sutherland, The Brontësaurus: An A–Z of Charlotte, Emily & Anne Brontë (& Branwell) (Icon, 2016)
Marje Wilson, The Brontë Way (Ramblers’ Association, 1997)
Steven Wood and Peter Brears, The Real Wuthering Heights: The Story of the Withins Farm (Amberley, 2016)
Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers, ed. Kit de Waal (Unbound, 2019)
Theakston’s Guide to Scarborough (1840)
Essays
Brontë Studies: The Journal of the Brontë Society, especially the following essays:
Edward Chitham, ‘Law Hill and Emily Brontë: Behind Charlotte’s Evasion’
Sophie Franklin, ‘“Ay, ay, divil, all’s raight! We’ve smashed ‘em!”: Translating Violence and “Yorkshire Roughness” in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley’
Claire O’Callaghan, ‘“He is rather peculiar, perhaps”: Reading Mr Rochester’s Coarseness Queerly’
Acknowledgements
At some point along the journey, a book becomes a collaborative exercise, and perhaps this book more than most. I’d firstly like to thank all those writers and friends who have looked at various drafts of this and given me helpful feedback. They are: Simon Crump, Steve Ely, Jim Greenhalf, Wendy Pratt and Claire O’Callaghan.
I’d like to thank my agent Jemima Forrester at David Higham Associates for all her help and advice. A big thanks to everyone at HarperCollins and HQ Stories, especially to Lisa Milton, Kate Fox, Abigail Le Marquand-Brown and to Paul Murphy.
The maps in this book have been drawn and designed by Christopher Goddard and are reproduced here with his kind permission. The Wandering Bard map was commissioned by the Brontë Society and is reproduced with their permission (©The Brontë Society). The poems in this book by Kate Bush, Carol Ann Duffy, Jackie Kay, Wendy Pratt and Jeanette Winterson have been printed by kind permission of the authors.
I’d like to thank individual contributors who were kind enough to take a walk with me and give me their time, thoughts and ideas: Claire O’Callaghan, Sarah Fanning and Wendy Pratt.
A special thanks goes to everyone at the Brontë Society and the Brontë Parsonage Museum, who have helped at every stage. In particular, I’d like to thank: Danielle Cadamarteri, Ann Dinsdale, Diane
Fare, Harry Jelley, Sarah Laycock, Lauren Livesey, Sue Newby, Kitty Wright and Rebecca Yorke.
The journal Brontë Studies has been a great resource and source of expertise and scholarship, and I would like to thank the editorial panel for all their help.
The ‘Boiled Milk’ chapter first appeared as an ebook through the University of Huddersfield Press. Thanks to everyone at the press and at the university for their support: Monty Adkins, Dawn Cockcroft, Martin Gill, Zoe Johnson, Jessica Malay, Alison McNab and Catherine Parker.
In researching this book, I was allowed access to various archives, and I would like to thank everyone at Chetham’s Library in Manchester; the Merseyside Maritime Museum and Central Library in Liverpool; and Scarborough Library, especially the librarian Angela Kale for going out of her way to source texts and images.
The Bronte Stones project was delivered in collaboration with the Bradford Literature Festival. I’d like to thank Stephen May at the Arts Council for brokering this relationship, and the then festival co-directors, Syima Aslam and Irna Qureshi, for their support.
Finally, thanks to Donna and Christian Stretton for copious cups of sack. Alis aquilae.
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