'Here Emily studied German with her book propped up before her...'
'One night about the time when the cold sleet and dreary fogs of November are succeeded by the snow storms & high peircing nightwinds of confirmed winter we where all sitting round the warm blazing kitchen fire having just concluded a quarrel with Taby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle...'
-Charlotte Brontë, Tales of the Islanders, 31 June 1829.
As children the Brontës would gather round the kitchen fire to listen to their servant Tabby's dark tales of the Yorkshire moors. The sisters were expected to take their share of the household tasks, and the kitchen features in many of their surviving accounts of daily life at the Parsonage. After Aunt Branwell's death in 1842 Emily acted as housekeeper, helping in the kitchen and baking bread.
Following Patrick Brontë's death in 1861 the Parsonage became the home of the Revd. John Wade, who made several alterations to the house, the kitchen being the room most affected by the changes. A back kitchen, where the washing and heavier household work was carried out in the Brontës' time, was demolished to make way for a large kitchen extension, blocking the mullioned window which had formerly looked out towards the moors. The range was removed, and the old kitchen became a passageway to Wade's new dining room in the large gabled wing. Today the kitchen houses displays of furniture and utensils which belonged to the Brontë family, and a kitchen range of the correct period has been added to help recreate the room's original appearance.