In January, 1831, Charlotte was sent to school again. This time she went
as a pupil to Miss W---, who lived at Roe Head, a cheerful roomy country
house, standing a little apart in a field, on the right of the road from
Leeds to Huddersfield. Three tiers of old-fashioned semicircular bow
windows run from basement to roof; and look down upon a long green slope
of pasture-land, ending in the pleasant woods of Kirklees, Sir George
Armitage's park. Although Roe Head and Haworth are not twenty miles
apart, the aspect of the country is as totally dissimilar as if they
enjoyed a different climate. The soft curving and heaving landscape
round the former gives a stranger the idea of cheerful airiness on the
heights, and of sunny warmth in the broad green valleys below. It is
just such a neighbourhood as the monks loved, and traces of the old
Plantagenet times are to be met with everywhere, side by side with the
manufacturing interests of the West Riding of to-day. There is the park
of Kirklees, full of sunny glades, speckled with black shadows of
immemorial yew-trees; the grey pile of building, formerly a "House of
professed Ladies;" the mouldering stone in the depth of the wood, under
which Robin Hood is said to lie; close outside the park, an old stone-
gabled house, now a roadside inn, but which bears the name of the "Three
Nuns," and has a pictured sign to correspond.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124