Thornton and the Brontes
The Reverend Patrick Bronte and Maria Branwell of Penzance were married in 1812 at the Parish Church of Guiseley, near Bradford.
After various appointments throughout the county of West Yorkshire (including at Dewsbury and Hartshead in Kirklees), the couple moved to Thornton with their first two children, Maria and Elizabeth, in March 1815. It was here (at a modest house on Market Street which is now known as the Bronte Birthplace) where they lived and where Maria gave birth to:
- Charlotte Bronte (1816)
- Patrick Branwell Bronte (1817)
- Emily Jane Bronte (1818)
- Anne Bronte (1820)
Shortly after the birth of Anne, Patrick Bronte resigned his post at St James's Church in Thornton, and the family then took up residence at the parsonage to the parish church in the village of Haworth, Maria Bronte dying only eighteen months after the move.
It was while growing up in Haworth that the Bronte sisters began to take an interest in writing, making story books which can still be seen exhibited in the Parsonage Museum in Haworth. But it was their adult works for which they became posthumously famous, with classics such as "Wuthering Heights" and "Jane Eyre" becoming milestones of nineteenth century English literature.
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