After breakfast, we headed out of Ilkley, with the help of GPS to Haworth. About 30 minutes drive away. Lots of narrow country roads to wind around again. Haworth has grown to be much bigger than I had been expecting. And the Brontes are huge business for the town. Their old parsonage that they lived in now has houses all around it.  The church that the father Patrick was the rector for has been demolished and replaced in the late 1800s. (For the benefit of James, the Brontes are famous writers – Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre, Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, Anne wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.)

But despite the tourism that it drips in, the exhibition is very well done. They have furnished the house with authentic furnishings of the Brontes and explained it well.  I enjoyed it.  I do wonder these days how many people actually read authors like the Brontes anymore. Or do they just watch the movies and TV adaptions?

I hadn’t realised what an unhealthy and unsanitary place Haworth was to live in those times. Patrick worked hard to get conditions improved, but usually to little avail. In those days, in Haworth 41% of people died before the age of 6 years old. The average age to live to was 25 years. It was one of the unhealthiest places to live in, at that time in Britain.

But I did appreciate that even though it was a grim and bleak time, it also showed the happy and emotionally rich and fulfilling life of the family.

We drove on south and had packed a picnic lunch, and ate it by an abandoned church and very overgrown cemetery. And I wondered, What do you do with an old church and cemetery that no-one wants anymore?

We drove around the outskirts of Bradford and Leeds which are towns that have grown together. Very grateful for GPS. And finally ended up at the National Coal Mining Museum.  The reason i picked this to do was because we are having internet issues here in Ilkley. I went on the internet to find something free or cheap to do, saw this museum mentioned briefly before the computer froze up again. So I didn’t know much about it, and was hoping that we hadn’t had a long drive for nothing!  Especially as Philip hates driving on the narrow, winding English roads in a manual car!

And it was fantastic! With a small group of other people, including children, we went on an underground pit tour Our guide was an ex-miner in his 70s with such a broad Yorkshire accent that I understood about one word in three.  At first he kept talking about “coil”. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Until it dawned on me he was actually saying “coal”.

We had to put on hard hats with the headlights, got in a cage and descended 140 feet down a real mine shaft. He told stories and explained the life of a miner from the 1700s to the present day.
In the 1700s, the whole family worked in the mine. In a tunnel about a metre high. Candles were expensive, so the father would work at the coal face of the funnel with the candle. The mother would be on her hands and knees hauling the coal along the tunnels.  And their children from the ages of five, would be working there too. Usually having to sit in total blackness for 12 hours a day. Because they had little trapdoors to open and close along the tunnel to manage things like the gases and fumes. Many of the kids went blind. They rarely saw daylight.

Then on to when the kids would be hauling the coal along. Fined if they didn’t meet their quotas.  The death rate was appalling. From explostions, fires, accidents, health risks of mining.  
They had tableaux of the miners in the mines. Pit ponies were used too. And some of the machinery they later used. The tour guide was a Yorkshireman wit such a wry sense of humour and had the tour children eagerly following him crawling up and down the tunnels and shafts.

Philip has got ancestors of several generations who were miners. He really appreciated the tour and hearing how they would have lived and worked. 

And made us both doubly grateful for the times we’re living now. Both Haworth and the mines was a very tough life. But the miners also, even though their lives could be dour and grim, they showed that they also made times for comraderie, friendships and sports to create emotionally rich times for themselves and their families. It wasn’t all gloom and doom.

It took us quite a while to drive back to Ilkley. Hit peak time traffic driving around Bradford. And it seemed like we turned a corner of the road of the city, and the next thing we’re out in the countryside, high in the Dales again. With the green rolling hills and the sheepl. Such a quick tranisition.

After a quick dinner back at the house, Philip and I went for a walk around the town of Ilkley in the late summer evening.

 

Down the hill, through the Main Streets of shops, past an old Manor House with its roots going back to a Roman Fort. Right down to the River Wharfe flowing at the bottom of the valley and the town. A lovely evening. A beautiful walk beside a very pretty river.

And both of us full of gratitude for the innumerable blessings we both experience continually!