Haworth church: a roof saga

Good and bad news for Haworth church today. The Telegraph & Argus reports:

Historic Haworth Parish Church will be having its last service next month – but only for the time being.
The Victorian church (pictured) will temporarily shut its doors on Sunday, July 8, until mid-October for the first stage of a major restoration project.
The plan is to replace its south-facing roof and refurbish the tower in a space of 15 weeks as part of a five-year, three-stage restoration scheme which will eventually cost in the region of £1.25 million.
Building work for the first stage of the plan will cost £227,000.
The church’s vicar, the Reverend Peter Mayo-Smith, said: “It’ll be wonderful to see the building work start after all our fundraising work.
“We’ve got some long-standing wedding arrangements for the church which we will honour and we’ve been negotiating with our architect and contractors to ensure that the building looks as good as possible for the wedding couples.”
Apart from wedding ceremonies, most of the church’s services will be held across the other side of Haworth’s Church Street, in the Patrick Brontë-designed Old School Room.
Meanwhile, fundraisers will be keeping up the hard work as they are still some £27,000 of hitting their target for the first stage of the restoration. Grants totalling £115,000 have come from English Heritage to help develop the project and pay a significant contribution towards the building work.
The church has raised almost £100,000 from donations by well-wishers, securing grants, staging its own events and receiving funds raised from community projects such as the Haworth calendar and Haworth Beer Festival.
John Huxley, chairman of the Church’s Future Group – the body responsible for finding grant funding – said: “We are optimistic we will hit our target for the first stage of £227,000, even though we’ve still got around £27,000 to find.
“We have an application for a grant with a major national funder, our own cash-raising programmes are still attracting support and we have high expectations of attracting support from the Government’s Listed Places of Worship Fund. But we’re conscious that we must continue to earn more money by our own efforts.”

Also published by the BBC News.

And the Daily Mail writes,

Thieves have stripped lead from the roof of the church where the Brontë sisters are buried, causing thousands of pounds of damage to the historic building.
The Rev Peter Mayo-Smith, has told of his 'great sadness' and claims that they may now even have to think about different material for the roof to prevent further vandalism.
He also said that the raids on St Michael and All Angels Parish Church in West Yorkshire may also have contributed the problems of a leaking roof which is causing religious paintings inside to 'literally start to disappear.'
A £1.25 million scheme is about to start to restore the 1879 fabric of St Michael and All Angels Parish Church but its targeting may force English Heritage to replace the North and South roofs with something other than lead to deter the thieves.
Mr Mayo-Smith said: 'My response is one of great sadness because of the lack of respect it shows not just for churches but historic buildings in general.
'Other buildings in Howarth [sic] have also been attacked for lead including the local school and community centre.
'We have suffered at least three metal thefts in 18 months. They have stripped lead from the North and South roof and over the vestry.
'As a result we have had quite significant amounts of water come into the building.
'The damage runs to tens of thousands of pounds for the roof alone whereas the scrap value will be in tens of pounds.
He said the main church roof was very long and it would have been been very heavy for the thieves to carry out in one job.
He also told how the church had reached its insurance limit.
'For a large amount of effort for very little reward they have caused so much damage to our infrastructure and the other damage is hard to put a figure on.' [...]
He said: 'The plaster is starting to fizz and you can see the damp and stains in the plaster work.'
It was also damaging Italian style paintings depicting Biblical stories which were put up on the walls.
He said: 'They are beautiful paintings but they are literally starting to disappear.'
The church is to close on July 8 for 15 weeks for the first stage of a £1.25 million scheme backed by English Heritage to completely restore the building, including the religious paintings.
It was in the hands of English Heritage and the architects whether lead was used for the roof or another material less attractive to thieves.
He said: 'It would be a great pity if it was not lead because it is traditional and we are in a heritage site.
'But metal theft has become endemic and reached the stage where it is damaging the whole country.' (Jill Reilly)

We know they are not rolling in money, but perhaps an inversion such as a security system and/or a watchman may help. We also wonder how the thefts can happen without anyone catching the thieves at it in such a place as Haworth.

The Telegraph looks at 'complicated literary heroines':

A list of female characters who confound and irritate us while providing the most satisfying glimpses of human complexity must begin with Jane Eyre (1847). Jane is pious, though heretical in her desire for equality, dutiful yet outspoken, compassionate but with exacting moral standards, and capable of heroic endurance. (Tahmima Anam)

The New York Times discusses the Orange prize and women writers.

In the hope of settling this dispute, I ask you to consider the history of literary women. It turns out, oddly, to be also a prolific history of “men,” among whom the most celebrated are Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell (Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), George Sand (Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin), Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Vernon Lee (Violet Paget).
The motive behind these necessary masquerades is hardly an urge to hide. Instead, it is a cry for recognition and a means of evading belittlement, or worse yet, the curse of not being noticed at all. The most pointed symptom and symbol of this pervasive fear is the poignant exchange between the 20-year-old Charlotte Brontë and Robert Southey, England’s poet laureate. Humbly and diffidently, she had sent him a sampling of her poems, trusting that he might acknowledge the worth of what she knew to be her “single, absorbing, exquisite gratification.”
His notorious reply, while conceding her “faculty of verse,” is nearly all that remains of his once powerful fame. “Literature,” he chided, “cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation.” If such condescending sentiments leave a contemporary writer feeling sick at heart, Brontë thought the letter “kind and admirable; a little stringent, but it did me good.” (Cynthia Ozick)

303 Magazine describes a Texas-born ballerina as follows:

Ballerinas have a reputation for being, well, somewhat prissy prima donnas. I blame the (up) tight buns and fussy tutus. But Meredith Strathmeyer, one of the dancers at Ballet Nouveau Colorado, is not that kind of ballerina. She evokes more peace and serenity than Liv Tyler’s character in Lord of the Rings. She is all long lines and fluid movement, and her face has the kind of old-world, self-possessed look that only the Brontë sisters could truly capture. (Stephanie Richards)

A columnist from The Awl states,

 I’d much rather spend the afterlife playing golf with President Coolidge and Charlotte Brontë than not-existing. (Jim Behrle)

The Jewish Journal features a high school senior who 'lights up when she discusses the works of Shakespeare or the Brontë sisters'.

An update from the Brontë Weather Project. Bursuteca posts in Romanian about Jane Eyre while Art & Decor Procházková (in Slovak) has made a Jane Eyre-inspired doll. Pattinase and JCL Reads both write about Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy.