Banagher accommodation - The Hill House - a welcoming and warm home.

The Hill House, Banagher. This house eventually became Arthur Bell Nicholl’s and his second wife, Mary Anna’s home. Photo taken on our August 2022 visit.

                                          

                                    The Hill House from The Hill Road before the ivy grew over it.

      

 

Charlotte Brontë stayed at Cuba Court, Banagher,  the impressive house where her new husband Arthur Bell Nicholls had been brought up by his aunt and uncle.

Cuba Court.

But where were we, two Brontë enthusiasts travelling in the footsteps of Charlotte and Arthur, going to stay when visiting Banagher? The answer was very simple…we would stay in the actual house where Arthur would eventually go to live with his aunt Harriet and his second wife and first cousin Mary Anna after he had returned to Banagher in 1861 following Patrick Brontë’s death  - 6 years after Charlotte’s death in 1855. This house is called The Hill House.

 Here it is in 2022 at the top of the hill coming up from Main Street, it is now (handily) a beautiful and well-run B&B called ‘Charlotte’s Way.' 

                                          

                                                

                                             

                                                   The Hill House 2022 now a fabulous B&B.

                                             

                                             

Here is a link to the website of this wonderful, tastefully decorated and comfortable B&B - once Arthur’s home. https://www.charlottesway.ie/

In earlier times The Hill House looked like this:

                                                

                

                                             

                                                                 The Hill House in 1904.

The Hill House was built in 1753 on glebe land to serve as the home for the incumbent of St. Paul’s Church of Ireland Church which is a stone’s throw away from the property.

St Paul’s C.of I Church is a one minute walk from The Hill House and was where Arthur Bell Nicholls and his family worshipped.

When I went into The Hill House, I felt a great sense of peace. I wonder if Arthur felt this too when he returned there after all the trauma, upset and upheaval he had experienced over the years since his arrival in Haworth in 1845 - almost 16 years earlier. 

 Of course Arthur would have known happy times in Haworth, but he had also lived through some very trying and distressing times - experiencing so much trauma and loss with the family:

• Arthur was there at the time of the heart breaking deaths of Branwell, Emily and Anne in 1848 and 1849, sharing in the family’s sorrow and, no doubt, supporting them as much as he could whilst diligently supporting Patrick Brontë as his curate
• In 1852 he proposed to Charlotte for the first time and she turned him down. Distraught he left Haworth and went to work in Kirk Smeaton near Pontefract.
• After returning to Haworth, and being overjoyed that Charlotte had now accepted his marriage proposal, his happiness was short lived when Charlotte died just nine months into their happy married life. Arthur watched as his darling Charlotte wasted away, dying on 31st March 1855.
• He stayed on at the family home caring for his aged and ailing father-in-law, caring for him until the day he died six years after his wife's death in 1861. At Patrick's funeral on 12th June, 1861, Arthur was so overcome that he had to be physically supported by William Cartman who jointly conducted the burial service with the vicar of Bradford Dr Burnett.
• Two months after Patrick's funeral, on 13th August 1861, poor Arthur officiated at his best friend Sutcliffe Sowden's funeral. The Reverend Sutcliffe Sowden who had married Arthur and Charlotte in 1855 had died quite tragically after suffering some sort of seizure and drowning after falling into the canal at Hebden Bridge.
• The final humiliating blow was dealt when the Trustees of his church in Haworth decided not to offer him the post of Perpetual Curate at the church he had dedicated his life to since arriving in Haworth in 1845. In effect Arthur had been the incumbent of the church in all but name for the previous six years as Patrick's health had gradually declined. But now the Trustees voted to reject him.

In essence, by 1861,  a devastated Arthur had lost his loving wife, his father-in-law, his job and his home. Understandably, with no other options available to him, he simply had to leave Haworth and return to his old home in Banagher. 

Upon the appointment of the new incumbent Rev John Wade, Arthur had only a few days to hastily pack up his own belongings and gather what he was able to take with him to Ireland. He kept items of sentimental and personal value but sadly had to auction off the larger items and pictures he couldn't take with him. Arthur finally and quietly slipped away from Haworth less than a month after John Wade's appointment. Exactly how raw and lost he was feeling we can only imagine.

I hope he found peace and calm in The Hill House when he finally arrived battered and bruised following so much trauma and upset. His Aunt Harriet and cousin Mary Anna had moved into The Hill House after her son, the Reverend James Bell, had taken over the headmastership of the school and moved into Cuba Court. No doubt they would have given him a warm welcome and helped him to rest and recover after all of his trials and tribulations, just as Aunt Harriet had helped Charlotte to do on her honeymoon in 1855 when she arrived, feeling rather ill, into Aunt Harriet's Cuba Court home.

Arthur arrived at The Hill House accompanied by Patrick's dogs Plato and Cato and also by Martha Brown who had agreed to serve as housekeeper-companion. Martha stayed for two years at The Hill House after which she returned to Haworth. Martha made lots of trips back to Banagher to be with the Bell family over the coming years.

                                                                     Martha Brown.

Upon his arrival at The Hill House, Aunt Harriet and Mary Anna allowed him to place all of his belongings around the house and arrange them as he wished. In the dining room he stood Patrick's old gun in a corner by the door and hung a photograph of Haworth Parsonage above the sideboard. On the turn of the stairs he placed Patrick's grandfather clock just as it had been positioned in the Haworth Parsonage. In the dining room he hung Richmond's portrait of Charlotte and the engraving of Thackeray along with many of the framed pictures painted by the three Bronte sisters. Leyland's medallion of Branwell hung near the grandfather clock. In a glazed bookcase he carefully kept his collection of all the family's manuscripts and most of the Bronte's signed books. He took their writing desks with him too including Charlotte's rosewood writing desk. He packed the juvenilia, the water-colours and the intricate samplers done by Charlotte, Emily and Anne. He also had shipped out a small mahogany table, an armchair and a birchwood rocking chair.

More poignantly he had brought with him some of his wife's clothing. Into a chest in the lobby he carefully placed Charlotte's wedding dress with her petite white gloves that fastened with a pearl at the wrists. Alongside her wedding dress he put her going-away bonnet with the pink roses and her small square-toed black shoes. 

The Hill House became almost like a shrine to the Bronte family he had loved and lost.

                                                                    Charlotte and Arthur.

In 2022 the house sits off the road with a grassed front garden and a gravel driveway leading to the property. Behind the house is a rectangular grassed garden with hedges separating the property from some new build houses behind. In Arthur's time all of this area would have been open, farmland and trees.

 Even with the modern-day changes, the rear garden was a quiet and peaceful place and I enjoyed sitting there imagining Arthur quietly doing the same, at peace with his thoughts and his precious memories.

Arthur never returned to his clerical life, although the friendly local historian we met, James Scully, told us that Arthur did help out occasionally with a baptism or two at St Paul's church. Instead he settled into a  peaceful life, well away from the ever-growing number of Bronte fanatics, undertaking some small-scale farming duties on his Aunt Harriet's 20 acres. He also joined in with many local community activities and was well liked and respected by the locals, his neighbours and in particlar the town's children. 

                                                        Arthur chatting in Banagher.

                                                       Market Square Banagher 2022

Almost three years after moving into The Hill House, at the age of 45, and almost nine and a half years after Charlotte's death, on 25th August 1864, Arthur married his cousin Mary Anna Bell, the 'pretty lady-like girl with gentle English manners' whom Charlotte had met in Dublin and then at Cuba Court on her honeymoon.

                                               

                             Mary Anna Nicholls née Bell. Arthur’s second wife and cousin.

Here are some photos of the interior of The Hill House in August 2022. It has a very homely and calm feel. I am sure Arthur too would have felt it's homely and calming effect when he arrived 161 years before us.

The current owner of the house has placed two framed photos on a chest of drawers, one of  Arthur and one of Charlotte. 

                                               

                                                   

When he died on 2nd December 1906, just a few weeks shy of his 88th birthday, we were told by a local historian that his body was laid out in the dining room (where we enjoyed a hearty Irish breakfast) and then his coffin was placed under Richmond's portrait of Charlotte until he was carried out of The Hill House and buried alongside the graves of the other members of his loving Bell family.

                                                    Arthur Bell Nicholls in his later years.

Having had the utmost pleasure, in August 2022, of residing at The Hill House, currently run as a superb B&B, I felt relaxed, calm, at peace and welcomed. I am convinced Arthur too would have experienced similar feelings when he returned to beautiful Banagher and to The Hill House, Banagher.