Follow the road to The Fleece Inn
At the main road cross over it and head down an adjacent lane
Haworth (/ˈhaʊ.ərθ/)[2] is a village in City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England,in the Pennines, 3 miles (5 km) southwest of Keighley, 10 miles (16 km) west of Bradford and 10 miles (16 km) east of Colne in Lancashire. The surrounding areas include Oakworth and Oxenhope. Nearby villages include Cross Roads, Stanbury and Lumbfoot.
Haworth is a tourist destination known for its association with the Brontë sisters and the preserved heritage Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.
Haworth is first mentioned as a settlement in 1209. The name may refer to a "hedged enclosure" or "hawthorn enclosure".The name was recorded as "Howorth" on a 1771 map.
Haworth's traditional events were an annual service at Haworth Spa and the rush bearing. Spa Sunday died out in the early 20th century and the rush bearing ceremony has not been held for many years. A modern event organised by the Haworth Traders' Association is "Scroggling the Holly", which takes place in November. Bands and Morris men lead a procession of children in Victorian costume following the Holly Queen up the cobblestones to a crowning ceremony on the church steps. She unlocks the church gates to invite the spirit of Christmas into Haworth. Father Christmas arrives bringing glad tidings
The first Haworth Arts Festival took place in 2000 and was repeated in 2001, but ceased. It was revived in 2005 as a festival combining performing and visual arts and street performance.
The festival has community involvement and uses local professional and semi-professional musicians, artists and performers and a larger name to headline each year. It has provided a stage for John Cooper Clarke and John Shuttleworth. The festival has expanded across the Worth Valley outside Haworth and is held on the first weekend in September.
Haworth Band is one of the oldest secular musical organisations in the Keighley area. Historic records indicate that there was a brass band at nearby Ponden in 1854 with a body of excellent performers. It was founded by John Heaton, who lived at Ponden. The band played at a celebration in Haworth at the conclusion of the Crimean War. "Over the years the world of brass band music went from strength to strength, during which time the Haworth Band went with it."
Every year the village hosts a 1940s weekend where locals and visitors don wartime attire for a host of nostalgic events.
From 1971 to 1988, 25 and 27 Main Street housed the Haworth Pottery, where Anne Shaw produced hand-thrown domestic stoneware derived from the arts & crafts tradition. She exhibited widely in the UK and USA in public and private exhibitions and received an arts association award for her ceramic sculptures. Her husband, Robert Shaw, depicted life (and prominent residents) in the village in the 1970s and 80s, in two collections of satires, The Wrath Valley Anthology, 1981, and Grindley's Bairns, 1988, praised by The Times Literary Supplement.
The Railway Children
The Railway Children is a 1970 British drama film based on the 1906 novel of the same name by E. Nesbit. The film was directed by Lionel Jeffries and stars Dinah Sheridan, Jenny Agutter (who had earlier featured in the successful BBC's 1968 dramatisation of the novel), Sally Thomsett and Bernard Cribbins in leading roles. The film was released to cinemas in the United Kingdom on 21 December 1970.
The film rights were bought by Jeffries. It was his directorial debut and he wrote the screenplay. The Railway Children was a critical success, both at time of release and in later years.
her true age during the making of the film and she was also not allowed to be seen smoking or drinking during the shoot. 17-year-old Jenny Agutter played her older sister, Roberta, and Gary Warren played their brother, Peter. Agutter had previously played the same role in the 1968 BBC Television adaptation of the story. Dinah Sheridan was cast as Mother and Bernard Cribbins as Perks the porter.
Jeffries admitted he was tempted to play the role of Perks himself, but eventually decided to cast Cribbins "because of his lovely calm comedy."
Filming locations
Inspired by the BBC's 1968 adaptation, Lionel Jeffries used the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway as the backdrop for the film, referring to it as per the original story as the "Great Northern and Southern Railway"
At the time of filming, there were still very few heritage railways in Britain and only the KWVR could provide a tunnel, which is important in a number of scenes. The tunnel is a lot shorter in reality than it appears in the film, for which a temporary extension to the tunnel was made using canvas covers.
Four of the already-preserved locomotives based on the Worth Valley Railway were chosen for use in the film's production in relation to role; MSC67 as the local train engine, newly-arrived 5775 (L89) as the Old Gentleman's engine, 52044 (preserved as L&Y 957) as 'The Green Dragon' express and 4744 (69523/1744) as the 'Scotch Flyer'. They were painted in period-inspired liveries for the filming: 5775 in brown, reminiscent of the Stroudley livery of the London Brighton and South Coast Railway; 957 in apple green, similar to liveries used by the North Eastern Railway; Great Northern Railway; and London and North Eastern Railway, and 4744 and MSC67 in plain black, as used by most railway companies in Britain at one time or another. 67 is now at the Middleton Railway in Leeds and 4744 is now with the North Norfolk Railway at Sheringham. 5775 and 957 are still on the Worth Valley Railway. As of 2021, 957 has returned to service after overhaul in its film guise, and 5775 is on static display at the Oxenhope Exhibition Shed having been repainted into its GN&SR livery. 4744 is undergoing a ten-yearly overhaul in Norfolk and 67 remains at Middleton but on display, having last operated in 2012.
A wide variety of vintage rolling stock was used in the film, including examples from the Metropolitan and London and North Eastern railways. Although different carriages appeared in different liveries, the dominant one is white and maroon, which is reminiscent of the livery of the Caledonian Railway. The most important carriage in the film, the Old Gentleman's Saloon, was a North Eastern Railway Director's Saloon, that has been used since in the stage production of the book. It and all the other carriages seen in the film are still at the KWVR, but tend to be used at special events only, due to their age.
A number of different locations were employed for various scenes. The house called "Three Chimneys" is in Oxenhope, just north of the Oxenhope railway station.[14] The Bronte Parsonage in Haworth was used as the location for Doctor Forrest's surgery. The scenes of the children sitting on a bridge were filmed at Wycoller, near Colne. Mytholmes Tunnel, near Haworth, and the railway line running through it, were used extensively in the film, including being the location for the paper chase scene, as well as the famous landslide scene, in which the children wave the girls' petticoats in the air to warn the train about said blockage. The landslide sequence itself was filmed in a cutting on the Oakworth side of Mytholmes Tunnel and the fields of long grass, where the children waved to the trains, are situated on the Haworth side of the tunnel. A leaflet, "The Railway Children Walks", is available from KWVR railway stations or the Haworth Tourist Information Centre.
The scenes in the Waterburys' London house, before their move to Yorkshire, were filmed at 4 Gainsborough Gardens in Hampstead, north-west London.
