How do Guiseley, Kirkstall and Apperley Bridge link into the Bronte Story?
- timbarber
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
With the latest film version of Emily Bronte’s classic novel having just hit the cinema, this version featuring Hollywood stars Margo Robbie and Jacob Elordi, it is sure to put the Bronte sisters back in the spotlight.
I often do private Bronte Country Tours and visit Thornton and the Bronte Birthplace Museum as well as spending time in Haworth soaking in the Pennine village where the famous Bronte sisters, their infamous brother Bramwell and Father Patrick lived. Guests are always amazed by the wild moors and the Bronte Parsonage Museum, seeing where the Bronte sisters lived and grew up creating their imaginary worlds and wrote their classic novels.
But the Bronte family story is not just confined to Thornton and Haworth.
I live in Burley in Wharfedale and my children were lucky enough to get into Woodhouse Grove School in Apperley Bridge on scholarships. The infants part of the school is called Bronte House and I had never put two and two together about potential links to the Bronte family until after my kids had started there.
The school actually plays a big part in the Bronte story, as it is where Patrick Bronte met his future wife Maria Branwell in 1812. Without this meeting the famous sisters would have never been born!
At the time the School had been opened as a school for sons of Methodist preachers and happened to be run by the Headmaster & Governor, a man called John Fennell. Maria Branwell happened to be the niece of John Fennell, and after relocating from Penzance was employed in an administrative role by the school.
Rev. Patrick Bronte had become friendly with Fennell first at Cambridge, then later in Shropshire when Fennell was a teacher and Bronte a curate. Fennel moved to Yorkshire, becoming employed at Woodhouse Grove School. Soon after Patrick Bronte relocated North to Yorkshire, with Fennell now Headmaster inviting Bronte to the school to help as an examiner.
Patrick Bronte was introduced by Fennel to his niece Maria and the couple fell madly in love.
Whilst Patrick Bronte was examining at Woodhouse Grove School, he had chance to take Maria out courting in the local area. One of their favourite spots was Kirkstall Abbey, a ruined Cistercian Abbey on the outskirts of Leeds.
It would be fair to say that neither of the couple were in their first flush of youth, Patrick being in his mid 30’s and Maria in her late 20’s, but neither had previously found true love. After a brief courtship of about 6 months Patrick proposed to Maria at Kirkstall Abbey in October 1812.
Maria accepted his proposal and Patrick Bronte mentions Kirkstall Abbey in his poem of the same name published shortly after.
We have a sight of a letter from Maria Branwell to Patrick from shortly after her acceptance of marriage.
‘Unless my love for you were very great how could I so contentedly give up my home and all my friends?… Yet these have lost their weight… the anticipation of sharing with you all the pleasures and pains, the cares and anxieties of life, of contributing to your comfort and becoming the companion of your pilgrimage, is more delightful to me than any other prospect which this world can possibly present.’
Below is a later sketch of the Abbey by their daugher Charlotte Bronte.
Patrick and Maria didn’t hang around and were married later in the year in December.
But this wedding adds an extra location close by to the school into the Bronte story.
The wedding of the Bronte sister’s parents took place at St. Oswald’s Church - the local Parish Church in Guiseley. At the time Patrick Bronte was the Minister of Hartshead-cum-Clifton in the Parish of Birstall.
There is a plaque inside the church celebrating the event which took place on 29th December 1812.
But, this happy day didn’t host just one wedding. John Fennel’s daughter Jane (Maria’s cousin) had also agreed to marry a local vicar Reverend William Morgan who was Patrick’s best friend, so they had agreed to have a double wedding. In fact Patrick Bronte actually conducted their ceremony shortly after his own and Morgan married him and Maria! John Fennell gave away both brides.
It is worth mentioning that you could maybe say it was a triple wedding not just double wedding. Maria had co-ordinated with her younger sister back in Cornwall who was to marry her cousin Joseph Branwell, to do so on exactly the same day and at the same time, 400 miles down south!
Woodhouse Grove features again as the double wedding reception also took place there!
Hopefully you found the story of interest. Patrick and Maria would go on to have 6 children, and that’s another story in itself. Without the couple meeting at Woodhouse Grove School we may never have had the classic literary novels Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Wuthering Heights. Now that would have been a shame.
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