By the old bridge at Cowan Bridge on the wall of the terrace that was once a Clergy Daughters’ School (shown left) there’s a plaque (shown right). A pedant immediately spots two mistakes. The apostrophe is in the wrong place and there’s no diaeresis (that is, two dots) over the ‘e’ of Bronte. Regarding the latter, the Brontë sisters’ father, born Patrick Brunty, would have been aghast that the plaque did not follow his masterful PR ploy to rename the family as Brontë. The new name was designed to add panache that would later aid the sisters’ literary careers. However, perhaps because printers of the day did not have an ë, the sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne) at first called themselves Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell when trying to get published – but perhaps more likely because they needed to pretend to be male.

As the plaque says, four of the Brontë sisters (Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily) spent a year at the Clergy Daughters’ School in Cowan Bridge in 1824-25. To say it was a miserable time would be an understatement. The two oldest daughters (Maria and Elizabeth) became ill and died shortly after returning to Haworth. They were not especially unlucky in that regard. Half of all deaths in the region at that time were of children under ten, reducing average life expectancy to just 26 (Wellburn, 1997). The period was no doubt traumatic for the surviving sisters. Charlotte drew upon the experience in Jane Eyre, where Lowood, Mr Brocklehurst, and Brocklebridge Church are analogues of the Clergy Daughters’ School, the Rev. Carus Wilson (the headmaster) and Tunstall Church, to which the sisters walked on Sundays.

I followed their path. It led first to the hamlet of Overtown, which lies on the Ribchester to Carlisle Roman road. An inviting track is on the line of the Roman road but it is not a public footpath. Instead I spent a few minutes looking for the Roman milestone that is said to be at the corner of the modern road. If it’s the two-foot-high, moss-covered stone I found then I hope that some expert has good reason to declare it a Roman milestone.

Looking back to Overtown

Right: Tunstall Church

It is surprising what you come across hidden away on back roads. Further along Woodman Road I passed several large sheds, a veritable industrial complex amongst the fields, with no sign saying what they were for. They used to be for chickens – and probably still are but I could not see, hear or smell any sign of them. If they are there, they’re certainly not free-range.

I now followed a track south past Churchfield House. The Charlotte Brontë description of this walk says “a bitter wind, blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces”. That’s a fair description of the day of my walk. There was snow on the northern hills of Gragareth and Ingleborough, with a cold wind but at least some sunshine.

The track ended near Tunstall Church, which was the Brontës’ destination. According to Jane Eyre, “we set out cold, we arrived at church colder: during the morning service we became almost paralysed”. While the 15th century church looks much as it did in the Brontës’ time, since it escaped the 19th century renovations that were carried out on most churches, it did not appear so bleak to me. I wandered inside and it seemed, like most churches, more spacious than expected.

Here I left the Brontës because they, of course, had to walk back to Cowan Bridge. I walked on to the village of Tunstall and towards Thurland Castle, once the home of the illustrious Tunstall family. I had always previously been driving past the castle, usually with the trees fully leaved, and I hoped that this time I would be able to view it properly. But the castle was quite distant and still largely hidden by trees. It is now strictly private and has, in any case, been converted into a dozen or so flats. I feel that an ex-castle that is no longer fulfilling its castling duties should be stripped of its title.