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The Cowan Bridge School was a Clergy Daughters' School, founded in the 1820s, at Cowan Bridge in the English county of Lancashire. It was mainly for the daughters of middle class clergy and attended by the Brontë sisters. In the 1830s it moved to Casterton, Cumbria, a few miles away.
Cowan Bridge School was a Clergy Daughters' School, founded and purchased in 1824 by Mr. Carus- Wilson. The old part of the school consisted of one house which housed the teachers. He added a building for a school and student dormitories. [1] It was a school mainly for the daughters of middle class clergy. It was first located in the village of Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, where it was attended by the Brontë sisters. [2] Two of the sisters, Maria and Elizabeth died from tuberculosis in the aftermath of a typhoid outbreak at the school.
In the 1830s the school moved to Casterton, a few miles away, where it was amalgamated with another girls' school. The (later headmistress) Dorothy Wilkinson travelled from Tasmania as a girl to attend in 1896. [3] The institution survived to the twenty-first century as Casterton School.
The building, now called the Brontë School House, is presently used as self-catering accommodation for tourists to the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales.
The Cowan Bridge school imposed a uniform on the children known as the Charity children, which humiliated the Brontës, who were among the youngest of the boarders. They suffered taunting from the older children, Charlotte Brontë especially, who owing to her short sightedness had to hold her nose close to the paper to be able to read or write. They slept two in a bed with their heads propped up, rising before dawn, making their morning ablutions in a basin of cold water (shared with six other pupils) which had often frozen during the night for lack of any heating. They descended for an hour and a half of prayers before breakfasting on porridge, frequently burnt. [4]
Charlotte Brontë's description in her 1847 novel Jane Eyre was similar, with burnt porridge and frozen water. They began their lessons at half past nine, ending at noon, followed by recreation in the garden until dinner, a meal taken very early. Lessons began again without pause until 5 p.m., when there was a short break for half a slice of bread and a small bowl of coffee and 30 minutes recreation, followed by another long period of study. The day ended with a glass of water, an oatcake, and evening prayers before bed. Punishments included privation of food and recreation, corporal punishment, and humiliations such as being made to sit on a stool for hours on end without moving, wearing a dunce's cap. [5]
The punishment is described in Jane Eyre and reports by Mrs Gaskell confirm this ill-treatment. Furthermore, when Mr Williams, reader at Smith, Elder & Co, congratulated her for the narrative vigour of her description, Charlotte Brontë, unusually vehemently, insisted that it was true, and that furthermore she had deliberately avoided telling everything so as not to be accused of exaggeration. It is difficult to think that Charlotte Brontë, having persistently repeated for twenty years the stories about the bad treatment inflicted on her sisters, could have exaggerated or invented them. For example, there is the description, given by an unidentified witness to Mrs Gaskell, of the little Maria who, very ill and having just received a suction cup placed on her right side by the doctor, rose suddenly on seeing Miss Andrews enter the room, and began to get dressed. Before she could slip into some clothing, the mistress pulled her violently into the centre of the room, scolding her for negligence and disorder, and punished her for being late, upon which Maria descended from the dormitory although she could hardly stand up. According to Mrs Gaskell, the witness spoke as if she saw it yet, and her whole face flashed out undying indignation. [6]
The hardest days were Sundays. In all weather, without adequate protective clothing, the pupils had to walk more than three miles (five km) over the fields to St John the Baptist's Church, Tunstall to attend the Sunday service. As the distance did not permit a return to the school, they were given a cold snack at the back of the church before evensong, then finally walked back to school. On arriving, cold and famished after the long walk, they were given a single slice of bread spread with rancid butter. Their Sunday devotions ended with long recitations from the catechism, learning long biblical texts by heart, and hearing a sermon of which the main theme was often eternal damnation. The Revd. Carus Wilson, unlike Patrick Brontë, was a Calvinist Evangelist who believed in predestination, and consequently in the damnation of the majority of souls. His preachings and writings, in the form of small manuals for the use of the pupils, were full of rhetorical force and other effects designed to make an impression on their young readers' minds. [7]
Anne Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.
Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which she published under the male pseudonym Currer Bell. Jane Eyre went on to become a success in publication, and is widely held in high regard in the gothic fiction genre of literature.
Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell with her own poems finding regard as poetic genius. Emily was the second-youngest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell.
Jane Eyre is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman that follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849), are well-known poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories attracted attention for their passion and originality immediately following their publication. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were accepted as masterpieces of literature after their deaths.
Patrick Branwell Brontë was an English painter and writer. He was the only son of the Brontë family, and brother of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Brontë was rigorously tutored at home by his father, and earned praise for his poetry and translations from the classics. However, he drifted between jobs, supporting himself by portrait-painting, and gave way to drug and alcohol addiction, apparently worsened by a failed relationship with a married woman. Brontë died at the age of 31.
The Brontë Parsonage Museum is a writer's house museum maintained by the Brontë Society in honour of the Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne. The museum is in the former Brontë family home, the parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire, England, where the sisters spent most of their lives and wrote their famous novels.
Patrick Brontë was an Irish Anglican minister and author who spent most of his adult life in England. He was the father of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, and of Branwell Brontë, his only son. Patrick outlived his wife, the former Maria Branwell, by forty years, by which time all of their six children had died as well.
St Catherine's School is a private Anglican junior and senior day and boarding school, located in Waverley, an eastern suburb of Sydney, Australia.
Cowan Bridge is a village in the English county of Lancashire.
Casterton is a small village and civil parish close to Kirkby Lonsdale on the River Lune in the south east corner of Cumbria, England. In the 2001 census the parish had a population of 500, decreasing at the 2011 census to 425.
The Life of Charlotte Brontë is the posthumous biography of Charlotte Brontë by English author Elizabeth Gaskell. The first edition was published in 1857 by Smith, Elder & Co. A major source was the hundreds of letters sent by Brontë to her lifelong friend Ellen Nussey.
Ellen Nussey was born in Birstall Smithies in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. She was a lifelong friend, correspondent and potential lover of writer Charlotte Brontë and, through more than 500 letters received from her, was a major influence for Elizabeth Gaskell's 1857 biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë.
Arthur Bell Nicholls was the husband of the English novelist Charlotte Brontë. Between 1845 and 1861 Nicholls was one of Patrick Brontë's curates and was married to his eldest surviving child, Charlotte, for the last nine months of her life. He cared for Patrick Brontë after Charlotte Brontë's death and spent the rest of his life in the shadow of her reputation. He returned to his native Ireland, remarried and left the ministry.
Maria Brontë was the eldest daughter of Patrick Brontë and Maria Brontë, née Branwell.
Elizabeth Branwell was the aunt of the literary sisters Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë.
Casterton School was an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 3 to 18 years in the village of Casterton in rural Cumbria. In its final years it also admitted boys, up to the age of 11. The school ceased to exist in 2013, though a preparatory school remains on the site. It merged with Sedbergh School, whose junior section now occupies the campus while Casterton's senior school pupils moved to the Sedbergh site.
William Carus Wilson was an English churchman and the founder and editor of the long-lived monthly The Children's Friend. He was the inspiration for Mr Brocklehurst, the autocratic head of Lowood School, depicted by Charlotte Brontë in her 1847 novel Jane Eyre.
Thomas Crowther was an evangelical clergyman in the Church of England who served as perpetual curate of St John in the Wilderness at Cragg Vale from 1822 until 1859. He was a friend of the Brontë family and an outspoken critic of the working conditions for children employed in cotton factories.
Elizabeth Brontë was the second-eldest child of Patrick Brontë and Maria Brontë, née Branwell. A member of the literary Brontë family, Elizabeth was the younger sister of Maria Brontë as well as the elder sister of writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and poet and artist Branwell. Less is known about Elizabeth than any of the other members of her family.