Twenty minutes after leaving Keighley, you enter a world of steam, literature, and Victorian architecture.

Haworth, the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway’s principal intermediate station, is three and a half miles from the modern townscape of Keighley and attracts visitors from around the world because from 1820 it was the home of Britain’s legendary author sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Their novels and poetry linked to their family history have captured the hearts and minds of millions of people..

The Rev. Patrick Brontë brought his family to Haworth when he took over as the Perpetual Curate at the hilltop St Michael & All Angels Church and tragedy hung over the family like a spectre as the campaigning clergyman battled to bring education and a more hygienic lifestyle to Haworth as well as fulfil his religious mission.

After his wife Maria died in September 1821, Patrick was left to bring up six children by himself but, sadly, he had to watch on as his five daughters and one son were victims of early deaths.

Yet three of the siblings left their mark upon the world with their classic novels and poetry and their lives are celebrated by the Brontë Society at the Parsonage Museum on Church Street which can be found by climbing up the classic hillside Main Street.

In the museum, you come within touching distance of the Brontë family. An amazing collection of the family’s artefacts is housed in rooms faithfully furnished in the same way the Brontës would have known them through the 1830s and 1840s.

Rev. Patrick outlived all his family – he died in 1861 – but there is still evidence of his passion for education as much for girls as well as boys in the schoolroom he had built for the village children in 1832 which still stands proudly just across the road from the Church and Parsonage Museum.