Haworth and the Brontes! The two are inextricably linked. Drawn from all over the world, coach loads of visitors regularly spill out into the car park of this Yorkshire village.
Then they slowly mount the steep cobbled Main Street up towards the Bronte museum and here wander around the old parsonage, reliving the sad short lives of the Bronte sisters, marvelling at the creative genius that gave the English language such masterpieces as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
Few, however, have any idea of another scene, some 70 years before Patrick Brontë and his young family arrived in Haworth in 1820, a scene that explains why the Bronte family ever came to Haworth at all. If we could travel back in time to 1756 we would witness a sight more astonishing and more significant than anything to be seen in the village today. A vast crowd of men and women numbering almost 6,000 is patiently waiting, packed into the expansive graveyard surrounding Haworth parish church. Some are even clinging on precariously to the church tower. Forgetful of the bitter winds sweeping down from the moors above, all are intent on listening to a preacher standing on a makeshift pulpit outside the church: none other than George Whitefield himself.
