St Michael's gets a reroofing or who gave Viagra to Mesrour?

Good news for the St Michael and All Angels Haworth church:

One of the most visited churches in the UK – where the crypt contains the bodies of famous literary sisters Charlotte and Emily Brontë – has been gifted a £115,000 cash windfall.
The money from the Heritage Lottery pot will go towards financing the biggest refurbishment of St Michael and All Angels since it was re-built in 1879.
Also among the latest round of grants is St Peter’s Church in Birstall, where £199,000 will go to help finance roof and masonry repairs.
They come under the the lottery fund’s Repair Grants for Worship scheme.
The Haworth handout will help boost funding on a major repair project, which is expected to cost in the region of £1.4million when completed.
The Rector, the Reverend Peter Mayo-Smith, said it was good news for the parish, which saw about a million visitors a year coming to see the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the church where the sisters’ father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, was the vicar in the mid-1800s.
The money, which would be match- funded by the church through fund-raising, was to pay for repairs to the roof and internal fabric of the church, he said.
“The first phase is to explore the problem in the south roof, which is badly leaking. We occasionally have to have buckets out to catch the water. The north roof, which isn’t as bad, will be tackled later,” said Rev Mayo-Smith. (The Telegraph & Argus)

“The roof is the most important thing to get right, then we can tackle work inside the church including restoring a wall painting.
“The aim is to make the church an asset to the community, so it can be used by people such as the Brontë Society and for concerts.
“It is also visited by many people because of the Brontës, so we want to improve the experience for people who come into the church.” (Keighley News)

THE rain is coming in and the masonry is crumbling at some of the region’s most treasured places of worship as they battle the elements.
But hard-pressed congregations were offered a lifeline yesterday with the announcement that £2.3m has been set aside by heritage organisations to finance urgent repairs at 16 listed church buildings across Yorkshire and the Humber region. They include St Michael and All Angels, Haworth, known for its connections to the Brontë family. (...)
St Michael and All Angels Church, at Haworth, where the Rev Patrick Bronte was incumbent from 1820 to 1861 and where members of the family including Emily and Charlotte, are buried in a family vault adjacent to the present south east chapel, has been awarded £115,000.It will be used to help pay for reroofing the south nave, side aisle and tower.
The honorary treasurer at St Michael’s, Averil Kenyon, welcomed the news saying: “The church roof is leaking badly and that in turn is causing serious damage to the 19th century wall paintings inside.” (...)
The head of the Heritage Lottery Fund for Yorkshire and the Humber, Fiona Spiers, said last night: “Historic places of worship are one of our most treasured cultural assets. They occupy a unique position at the heart of communities up and down the country, and are a focus for so many civil and social activities in addition to their central purpose as a place for prayer and contemplation.” (Yorkshire Post)

Averil Kenyon, honorary treasurer at St Michael and All Angels church in Haworth, said: "Today is a very good day for our historic church."Getting this grant is a tremendous lift and will give us more leverage with other grant giving bodies."
The Parochial Church Council is looking for nearly a quarter of a million pounds to complete the restoration project for the church.
Repairs include reroofing the south nave, side aisle and tower. (...)
"Overall we will need about £240,000 to complete the project, which will be the first large scale repairs carried out on the roof since the 19th century." (BBC)

Mia Wasikowska has a... erm... curious anecdote to share about shooting Jane Eyre 2011. On showbizspy:

Mia Wasikowska had to put up with an over-excited horse while shooting the new Jane Eyre movie.
The Aussie actress, 21, says she was shocked when a horse she was working with on the classic drama got turned on about being on-screen.
“All I remember is that whenever my costar Michael Fassbender hopped on the horse, it would get a huge erection,” Mia said.
“The poor horse was just…really happy! And they had to keep running him around the block every time Michael hopped on him. So that kind of stalled our day of filming. The thing was just…dangling!
“That was day three. I remember that exactly and always will.”

Curtail Call reviews In the Next Room by Sarah Ruhl, now performed in Sydney:

Wittingly, or unwittingly, Ruhl has created something much more potent and questionable than the penchant for costume drama she set out to indulge, a legacy of a misspent youth, reading Austen and Brontë. She seems to me to have remained oblivious to the political ramifications of this work, such has been the focus implied in the title. (Lloyd Bradford Syke)

The Queen's University Journal talks about the Freedom to Read Week:

Natalie Colaiacovo, ArtSci ’11, read Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to a crowd of nearly 30 people in Stauffer Library on Feb. 15.
She said that she chose to read from the book because of how controversial its subject matter was at the time of publication.
“While it wasn’t officially banned or censored, the book was criticized for its portrayal of a strong independent woman, which was a no-no in the 19th century, and its realistic depiction of the power dynamics of marriage at the time,” Colaiacovo told the Journal in an email. “[People] thought that the book would encourage increased female independence. One critic asserted that ‘it was utterly unfit to be put in the hands of girls’.” (Jessica Fishbein)

According to Niner Online... Charlotte Brontë is the lesser (!) known of the Brontë sisters:

Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte is the lesser known Brontë sister (Emily wrote the infamous "Wuthering Heights"). "Jane Eyre" is a mysterious coming-of-tale that manages to provide readers with a happy ending even after pages full of suspense and tragedy. (Dana Boone)

Poor Anne, now she is not even the lesser known sister, she simply doesn't exist anymore.

We detect some Luddite flair in this comment in the Fairfield Mirror:

“Control-x, control-c and control-v have short-circuited the intellectual enterprise dramatically,” he said. He also believes students are adrift living in this post-modern digital virtual reality.
“How much of what is authentic is being diluted, and instead my students are easily accepting the counterfeit.” He encourages his students to slow down, think and be far more circumspect for genuine knowledge.
“It might be valuable for students to step back for a moment to appreciate how Herman Melville, the Brontë sisters, Edith Wharton, or E.M. Forster crafted works of genius from their quill and ink pens. (Annie Rooney)

Robin McKinley mentions Jane Eyre as one of her desert-island books on normblog; another appearance of the Brontë country on The Spoof!; admit1 publishes a late review of the Tamasha's production of Wuthering Heights; Bücher-Signale posts about Jane Eyre (in German); And...scene! reviews Wuthering Heights 1939; Felicity (in Portuguese) and Stuff with Thing talk about Wuthering Heights; Across the Pond posts about her trip to Haworth and cybagoseuk has uploaded to YouTube a Haworth video; I Heart Classics discovers that Jane Eyre is everywhere and the Brontë sisters celebrates Tabby's death anniversary.

The Villette read-along hosted by Unpotdownables has new contributions: Unpotdownables, Polishing Mud Balls, Books and Chocolate, The Sleepless Reader, Lit and Life and Dolce Bellezza.

Categories: Haworth, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Villette, Wuthering Heights