In April 1820, the Brontë family arrived at a modest parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire. Patrick Brontё was the new curate, coming with his wife Maria, and 6 small children, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell, Anne and Emily. While beside the open moors, their new home sat right beside the town cemetery, a daily, visceral reminder of the omnipresent death that gripped this overcrowded, industrial township. Yet, from this place of loss and illness, no-one could know that this simple, unassuming household would soon become the crucible for some of the world’s most enduring literature, including Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  In History Hit’s new documentary, Death in the Parsonage: The Brontës, Dr Madeleine Pelling and Dr Anthony Delaney investigate this extraordinary paradox. They explore the grim reality of life in 19th-century Haworth – where the average age of death rivalled London’s worst slums – and how this family, steeped in tragedy, created such enduring, vibrant art, finding their escape in their wild, gothic imaginations. A life lived with loss Whilst a pretty place today, 200 years ago, Haworth was an industrial town where deadly diseases like cholera and typhus were rife, with tuberculosis (or ‘consumption’) being the most common killer. For the Brontë children, living cheek by jowl with death was their reality. Nevertheless, on the edge of the town, the Brontё sisters could step out of the confines of Haworth. Surrounded by books and periodicals and treated as intellectual equals to their brother, this tightly-knit group of creative, intelligent siblings needed no company but their own.  However, tragedy struck the family early and relentlessly. Little over a year after they arrived, their mother, Maria Brontë, died of cancer. The enduring longing for her, especially among the younger siblings who barely remembered her, is hauntingly captured in Charlotte Brontë’s idealised portrait of her mother – a ghost haunting the parsonage and the pages of their novels, which are full of motherless children yearning for family. The loss intensified when Patrick Brontë sent his daughters to a new clergy daughters’ school at Cowen Bridge, which, unbeknownst to him, was a harrowing experience of harsh discipline and appalling hygiene. The unsanitary conditions led to devastating outbreaks of typhus and tuberculosis, claiming the lives of the two eldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, within weeks of each other. Patrick brought his remaining daughters home soon after. Charlotte later immortalised her harrowing time there in ‘Jane Eyre’, describing the school as a place that left her “physically stunted.”  Imagination and rebellion Faced with relentless death, the surviving Brontë children – Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne – found a powerful escape in their wild, gothic imaginations. Their home was rich with intellectual stimulus, and their father encouraged them to read widely from his private library, treating his daughters as intellectual equals. To fill the void of their lost family members, the siblings created elaborate imaginary worlds, including their ‘Glass Town Confederacy’, ‘Angria’ and ‘Gondal’. In the documentary, Anthony talks to the Principal Curator of the Brontё Parsonage Museum, Ann Dinsdale, and explores the tiny, hand-stitched miniature books they created. Filled with microscopic script for secrecy, they were full of shocking content – murder, dark romance, and immoral heroes – and became the blueprint for their later, world-shaking novels. Ann Dinsdale, Principal Curator of the Brontё Parsonage Museum, being filmed with the Brontё’s miniature hand-stitched books.Image Credit: History Hit The documentary shows how these creative worlds became a vital sanctuary. Their youthful tales, featuring burning beds and murderers driven mad by ghosts, became precursors to the potent gothic sensibility that would define their masterpieces, such as the fire set by Bertha in Jane Eyre. Branwell’s downfall Forced by financial necessity to find careers, historian Juliet Barker explains that the fiercely private sisters viewed education as essential for future independence, knowing they would have no income after their father’s death. While initial work as governesses proved miserable, Charlotte and Emily sought opportunity by traveling to Brussels to improve their teaching skills, hoping to eventually open their own school. However, their time abroad was cut short by the death of their aunt, and the costly venture ultimately failed, forcing them back to the parsonage. While the sisters channelled their passion into their writing, their only brother, Branwell, struggled under the weight of expectation. After failed attempts as an artist and a railway clerk, he found work as a private tutor for the wealthy Robinson family. This job, meant to provide stability, instead led to a consuming and scandalous affair with the family’s mistress. Dismissed and his romantic world shattered, Branwell spiralled into a devastating addiction to opiates and alcohol, which masked the real cause of his decline: consumption. Anthony visits the Brontë Parsonage Museum to see a recreation of Branwell’s chaotic room and a chilling sketch he drew in his final year, showing himself in bed with Death as a skeleton looming over him – a powerful, creative self-prophecy. Branwell died in his father’s arms in September 1848, having declared he had done “nothing either great or good.” The power of the moors Grief over his wife and children galvanised Patrick into action. Taking his role as a minister seriously, he successfully campaigned for an inspection of Haworth by the general board of health which produced the damning Babbage Report. Its shocking findings revealed the horrifying local reality: the average age of death was just 25.8 years old, rivalling London’s worst slums. In the midst of their grief, the remaining sisters found solace in the raw, elemental landscape of the moors. For Emily, walks on the moors with her beloved dog ‘Keeper’ were a potent creative force. She began work on her singular masterpiece, ‘Wuthering Heights’, where the wild, untamed nature of the landscape becomes an active participant in the savage saga of doomed love and vengeance. The moors near HaworthImage Credit: History Hit The landscape was littered with folklore that directly inspired their darkest novels. In the documentary, Madeleine explores local legends of the moors like the Gytrash (a spectral dog or horse that portended misfortune) and the “wailing woman” with folkloric historian Dr Ceri Houlbrook. She explains how such tales were passed down to the Brontës by their family servant, Tabitha Ackroyd. Such stories blurred the line between religion and folklore, reinforcing the gothic sensibility that defined the Brontë’s writing. The Brontë sisters published their visionary novels under male pen-names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Madeleine speaks to historian and Brontё expert, Dr Claire O’Callaghan to discuss how the Brontё’s imagination shaped their rebellious literature. Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre – quintessential gothic masterpieces – blended dark romance and supernatural elements that immediately shocked Victorian society, yet they were overwhelmingly successful. But just as the world discovered Emily’s genius, she too fell victim to tuberculosis, dying on 19 December 1848 after stubbornly refusing medical aid. Anne followed her sister just months later on 28 May 1849, having spent her final months with her sister Charlotte and friend Ellen Nussey in her beloved Scarborough. Presenter Dr Madeleine Pelling (left) with Director & Producer Laura McMillen (centre) and Shooting Assistant Producer, Shane Smith (right) – on location in Scarborough.Image Credit: History Hit An enduring legacy Charlotte was now left alone, her life becoming, in her words, “a long, terrible dream”. However, as Dr Claire O’Callaghan tells Madeleine, her solitude led her to safeguard her sisters’ legacy, publishing their works and writing their biographies (and collections of poetry in ‘The Literary Remains of Acton and Ellis Bell’) to appease Victorian critics and which would become the foundation of the Brontë myth. Charlotte found a brief moment of unexpected happiness with her marriage to her father’s assistant curate, Arthur Bell Nichols, in June 1854, only to be cut short by illness (likely exacerbated by pregnancy and extreme morning sickness) less than a year later on 31 March 1855, aged 38. As Madeleine points out, while the Brontës’ story is one of relentless tragedy, their enduring legacy lies in the literature they left behind. Their novels – exploring themes of madness, sex, and violence – were rebellious works that pierced the veneer of Victorian politeness. As the documentary concludes, the Brontës were shaped by their unique environment: the close family life, the ambition of their father, the constant presence of death in Haworth – and the wild elemental landscape just outside their door. Their literature is a mirror reflecting the gritty truth of the volatile world they lived in, proving that you cannot have the Brontës without Haworth. Watch Death in the Parsonage: The Brontës to discover how a family steeped in loss created a literary legacy that still speaks to human nature today.