Thorpe Underwood and the Brontës

Anne Brontë was governess at Thorp Green Hall to the four children of the Revd Edmund Robinson from 1840 to 1845. The estate is now known as Thorpe Underwood and is home to Queen Ethelburga’s Collegiate, a group of independent schools. Thorpe Underwood Hall was rebuilt in 1902 just southwest of the hall that Anne knew, which burned down in 1895. Her room had a view of a large circular fishpond, which still exists in the school grounds. The original house appears as Horton Lodge in her novel Agnes Grey.

Anne had mixed feelings about her position. While she liked the children, she hated being away from her home in Haworth. She wrote about the place in Agnes Grey: ‘The surrounding countryside itself was pleasant, as far as fertile fields, flourishing trees, quiet green lanes, and smiling hedges with wild flowers scattered along their banks could make it; but it was depressingly flat to one born and nurtured among the rugged hills.’

In 1843 Anne’s brother Branwell came to Thorp Green. He was engaged as tutor to the Robinsons’ son. Branwell was ill while he was there – but not so unwell that he was unable to instigate some sort of illicit relationship with Mrs Lydia Robinson, 13 years his senior and the mother of five children. Her husband found out and Branwell was dismissed in July 1845; Anne had resigned a month earlier. Branwell’s dismissal led to his alcoholism and drug use, which resulted in his early death three years later. Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote a biography of Branwell’s sister Charlotte, blamed Lydia, whom she described as ‘that bad woman who corrupted Branwell Brontë.’

The latter part of the walk follows some of the route by which Anne Brontë would have made her way to and from Thorp Green Hall to the railway at Cattal, on the York to Harrogate line, for her rare visits back to her home at the parsonage in Haworth. She may have been accompanied by Flossy, the spaniel she was given as a present by the three Robinson girls who were her pupils. Flossy retuned to Haworth with Anne when she left Thorp Green in 1845.

Walk along the road with the fisheries to your left, to reach a ‘Green Hammerton’ footpath sign on the right by a high brick wall. Go over the stile beside the wall and follow the path between the hedge and wall to a stile and footbridge on your right.

Go over the footbridge and follow the waymarked path diagonally left across the field to a gateway between two oak trees. Do not go through the gateway, but pass to the right, through a hedge gap. Follow the path with the hedge on your left, heading right at the end. After 150yds (137m), turn left over a footbridge in the hedge. Go over the stile at the end of the bridge and follow the hedge on your right, over another stile and a footbridge with a stile at the end.

Continue beside a small wood to the corner of the field. Go over a small footbridge, then straight ahead across the field towards the farm buildings. The path curves to pass to the right of the buildings. Go through a metal handgate, then turn left down a metalled lane.

Where the lane bends left, go straight ahead through a gateway towards Pool Spring Farm and continue along the track for 0.75 miles (1.2km). The track bends eventually left, to pass right of the farm buildings. By the farm turn right and follow the track as it bends through the yard. Continue ahead along the main track, which bears left by a handgate, and further on, bends 90 degrees left.

Leave the main track here to go straight on up another track, through a gateway. The track passes beside woodland to a handgate by a double field gate and comes out onto a lane. Bear left up the lane, past houses on your right, to reach a high brick wall.

Follow the wall to a T-junction and turn left. Continue to follow the brick wall, turning left again at the next T-junction, just beyond the post box, and continue along the lane back to the parking place.