STAR LETTER ON THE BRONTË TRAIL
I was delighted to see an article on the Brontë family [Vol 90 Issue 2], a family to which I have some connections. My Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Elizabeth Hirst was a friend of Mrs Patrick Brontë, and I like to think that perhaps the children of both ladies played together whilst their mothers talked. Passed down in the family is a remark made by an ancestress that the Brontë sisters were “queer lasses”.
I am a Brontë enthusiast, and have visited many of the places associated with them. Oakwell Hall, the Fieldhead of Charlotte’s novel Shirley, is a gem, a beautiful 16th-century manor house with a panelled hall, set in an attractive formal garden. In the late 1920s there was a plan to dismantle the Hall and send the stones to the USA where it would be erected. However this scheme was thwarted. I love the place, have visited it many times over the years and know every nook and cranny. Sometime I will go again! Thank you for the memories.
Brian Arundel,
Siegen, Germany