We’ve nothing fancy

Financial Times visits Calverley Old Hall and the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

After breakfast the next morning in the great hall — where polished concrete work surfaces and pale oak panelling, a clever echo of some of the original wainscoting, wrap around a phalanx of modern appliances — we drive to nearby Keighley and catch a steam train into Brontë country. “We’ve nothing fancy,” the conductor warns us, “if you want a cappuccino you’ll have to try the station café”. But we’re not after fancy, and we settle down happily with KitKats and filter coffee as the train huffs and splutters its way through the October sunshine along the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway.

Twenty minutes later, we disembark and climb uphill through the pretty village of Haworth, past tea rooms and upmarket tat shops, to the Brontë Parsonage Museum. It was in this grey and forbidding house, overlooking the moors, that the talented Brontë sisters, together with their troubled brother Branwell, grew up — and where Emily Brontë wrote her 1847 masterpiece Wuthering Heights. Brontë fans have long flocked to Haworth but since 2021  — when a Friends of the National Libraries campaign raised £15mn to save the Honresfield library (a remarkable private collection of literary artefacts) for the nation — there has been all the more reason to visit. Among the gems from the hoard now on display here are Brontë diaries and poetry manuscripts, and one of the exquisite miniature books that Charlotte wrote as a child. (Roula Khalaf)

The Northern Echo and others announce that  

Embsay Kirk, Skipton, with ties to Charlotte Brontë for sale at £1.95m

The link is a bit tenuous. While Brontë did work as a governess at the nearby Stone Gappe Hall for the Sidgwick family (around 1839), and John Sidgwick (who some belief to have inspired the character of  Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre later moved with his family to Embsay Kirk in 1847, the author herself never lived at the property.

The Telegraph & Argus also comments about another property in Thornton:

The owner of a derelict former pub in a Bradford village has been refused permission to appeal against a Council decision to make the building safe and bill him for the cost of emergency repairs.
Mohammed Farid now faces paying the £8,000 that Bradford Council says it cost to remove the roof of the former Springfield Hotel, on Market Street in Thornton, after parts of it collapsed into the street.
He must also pay court costs of £3,440.
The building, on the same street as the birthplace of the Brontë sisters, was deemed “dangerous” by Council staff who took the decision to close the road as an emergency measure and to remove the roof in June 2023. (Tony Earnshaw)

And ending our real estate section, an article in The Bolton News:

Nestled in the rural embrace of the West Pennine Moors, our property of the week certainly has an air of Wuthering Heights about it. ( Saiqa Chaudhari)

A quiz about sisters in The Journal:

Perhaps the most well known group of literary sisters were the Brontë sisters. Which of these novels was not written by a Brontë sister?
Rebecca
Villette
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heighs.

Still, the new cast announced for Wuthering Heights 2024 appears in specialized websites: Flickering Myth. In the latest installment of the radio program La Hora Azul (RNE, Spain)

Cumbres Borrascosas y Brasil

Con Rosa Alcaraz recordamos uno de los paisajes que aparece en el gran clásico 'Cumbres Borrascosas', publicado en 1847, año en el que Felix Mendelssohn visitó por última vez Inglaterra (pocos meses antes de morir) para interpretar el cuarto concierto para piano de Beethoven. Descubrimos una novedad discográfica que nos lleva hasta Brasil. Se titula 'Faz tempo' y lo publica el quinteto Alvorada. Con esta música aprovechamos para escuchar a Heitor Villa-Lobos dirigiendo a la Orquesta Nacional de Francia en una grabación histórica.  (Translation)

The Japanese Brontë Society blog talks about the recent 39th Japan Bronte Society Conference 2024 that was held at Kobe City University of Nursing on Saturday, October 19th . The Brontë Birthplace shares some of the refurbishment progress updates:

External restoration work, including the windows, roof, and exterior painting, has been successfully completed—something you may have already noticed! Now, we’re three weeks into the sensitive restoration of the house’s interior. Each step has been carefully planned to ensure the heritage of this extraordinary home is preserved for generations to come.

Restoration work began in September, and since then, we’ve made significant progress. From repairing key structural elements to carefully restoring historical details, it’s been incredible to see the transformation of this iconic house

Recently, work on the scullery floor revealed a remarkable discovery—a flagstone floor original to the house from the time the Brontës lived at 72-74 Market Street. This exciting find offers a glimpse into the past, with restoration already underway using funds from the ongoing Furnish the Brontë Birthplace Appeal.