West Yorkshire Accommodation

Octagonal Methodist Church, Heptonstall, Hebden Bridge

Bolton Brow Chapel alongside the Rochdale Canal, Sowerby Bridge

Chapel ruins Heptonstall, Hebden Bridge

Pennine Way, Bronte Way, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte UK

West Yorkshire has something for everyone - Walking, Canals, Literary and Industrial heritage, Labour History, Arts Festivals, 100s of listed buildings and lots of activities for kids - especially outdoor ones like sculpture and country side trails at, for example, Hardcastle Crags near Hebden Bridge.

West Yorkshire Industrial & Labour History

West Yorkshire has some of the most fascinating labour and industrial history in the UK - a hotbed of non-conformity which stretches back before the Chartist Movement of the first half of the 19th century. Dig deeper into West Yorkshire's rich labour history and you'll discover Luddite uprisings around Huddersfield at Marsden, resistance to the poor law and Chartist uprising in and around Halifax and Huddersfield, religious evangelism, symbolic paternalist business strategies at Salts Mill Saltaire, the rise of the labour movement and the Labour Party, women's suffrage and organised working women and social and economic decline. Today West Yorkshire is an area promoted for its natural beauty and industrial history.

West Yorkshire is also undoubtedly home to some of the most picturesque walkways in the country including the Calderdale Way, the Pennine Way, the Bronte Way and the Colne and Holme Valleys. The South Pennine Ring is now fully open and restored for walking or cycling along towpaths or pleasure cruising down 'the cut'. Some of the largest of Yorkshire historic textile mills are now vibrant arts centres, notably UNESCO World Heritage Salts Mill at Saltaire near Bradford and Dean Clough at Halifax.

Literature, both fiction and fact, well worth reading to explore West Yorkshire's religious, industrial and labour history include Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (first published 1847), E.P. Thompson's 'The Making of the English Working Class' (first published 1963) and 'The Remaking of the British Working Class 1840-1940 (Savage & Miles, 1994). Dorothy Thompson's book, 'The Chartists' (1984) is also brilliantly clear and accessible.

West Yorkshire Religious History

The mark of attending to the 'Moral Machinery', as E.P. Thompson refers to religion, is visually everywhere in West Yorkshire, as much as it present in the Bronte novels. Radical lay preachers, however, were a group that played a large part in the growth of the Chartist Movement. But religion was never at the core of the Chartist Movement.

E.P. Thompson (1963) suggests that From the outset the Wesleyans fell ambiguously between Dissent and the Establishment, and did their utmost to make the worst of both worlds, serving as apologists for an authority in whose eyes they were an object of ridicule or condescension, but never of trust.

No doubt the Brontes were well aware of the Methodist Revival in the War years of the early 19th century, and its increasing separation out from the Church of England with its unique brand of hell fire, promise of reward after death and sexual repression. Catherine Linton's taunting of Joseph's superstitions comes to mind from Wuthering Heights.

West Yorkshire Literary Pilgrimage - Bronte Sisters & Ted Hughes

Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath are the key figures connected with literary pilgrimage to the area. A dip into the poems or novels of the above is to perhaps begin to understand some of the essence of the area - Ted Hughes' collection of poems in 'Elmet' alongside Fay Godwin's photographs is highly recommended.

Sylvia Plath's poem on Hardcastle Crags in 'the Colossus', and her take on the area in her journals are of interest, as are of course the Classics 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights', or digging deeper, the Gondal poems.
See www.bronte.info for full listings.

See also Jill Liddington's writing on Anne Lister of Shibden Hall Halifax.

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