After my visit to the Brontë Parsonage I headed next door to St Michael and All Angels, more commonly known as the Brontë church. This is the third church building on the site dating between 1879 and 1881; parts of the older church survives but not as it would have been during the Brontë’s time when their father was the parish priest here.
Patrick Brontë moved here in 1820 with his wife Maria and their children Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne. His wife would die of cancer a year later and in total he would spend 41 years at this church and outlive all of his children. As previously mentioned only Anne, who died in Scarborough, is not buried in the family vault.
In 1845 Arthur Bell Nicholls arrived as curate to the church and took on a lot of the administration duties as Patrick’s eyesight began to fail. He would also of course go on to marry Charlotte Brontë – she was pregnant with his child when she died, probably from complications related to the pregnancy.
The church isn’t very big and there isn’t a great deal to look at but I still enjoyed wandering through and finding some relief from the sun. One thing it does have an abundance of is beautiful stained glass. The second picture is of the so called American Window, donated by Thomas Hockley, an American admirer of Charlotte Brontë.
I also took a wander around the graveyard.
Due to overcrowding the graveyard closed in 1883 with a new cemetery opening nearby. It was Patrick Brontë that campaigned for the graveyard to be tidied up and the headstones placed vertically as bad drainage was causing severe health problems in the area.
One sign that caugth my eye directed visitors to grave JS 1796. This is the last resting place of a James Sutcliffe, a highwayman who was hanged at the Tyburn gallows at York.
The Practicalities:
The church is usually open 10am-4pm seven days a week (till 8.30pm on Thursdays). Free to enter but donations welcome – when I was visiting they had a stall set up inside the entrance so I bought a few souvenirs.
Easily found at the top of Main Street and clearly signposted.
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