Brontë Birthplace Community Ownership Campaign

The aim of the campaign is to purchase and restore the Brontë birthplace for community, national and international use.

A campaign led by local community members has been launched to save the Brontë Birthplace from being sold on the open market to a private buyer.

The Birthplace has had a chequered recent history, with ownership frequently changing hands, and it has an unreliable future.The building has served many uses in its history including a butchers, a small museum, residential flats and most recently had been a popular café until 2020. The café did not reopen after Covid and the property is now empty.There is a short window of opportunity to bring this unique heritage asset into community ownership.

The Brontë Birthplace has the potential to put Thornton, Bradford, more prominently onto the tourist map with the concomitant additional benefits to the local economy. The heritage property is located at 72-74 Market St Thornton, BD13 3HF, and is the site at which Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë were born between 1816-1820.

The Brontë sisters’ literature is famous internationally and their writing has inspired many artists including music, art, writing, film and theatre productions. The site complements the Brontë Bell Chapel, another monument in Thornton, where Patrick Brontë gave his sermons, and St James Church which holds the font where the sisters were baptised, as well as a Brontë exhibition.

The proposal is for the Birthplace to be renovated and reopened as a heritage site, offering Airbnb accommodation, a café, and a venue to host events and outreach projects, celebrating the Brontë legacy.

The refurbishment of the Brontë Birthplace would significantly increase the attractiveness of Market Street (previously a bustling shopping street) to new investment, adding to recent ventures such as Thornton Furnishings and The Apothecary Gallery.

For visitors and local people it will add another dimension to the story of the Brontë family in the Bradford District, presenting their early lives and building connections between the birthplace and the Brontë Bell Chapel both in Thornton, and the Brontë Parsonage in Howarth where they grew up.

This provides an opportunity to contribute to building an appealing tourist offer for visitors to Bradford, offering rich “bookable products” to international and national tourists. At the same time the events space will offer children in Bradford, the youngest city in the UK, to engage in culture, as well as being inspired by the Brontë legacy.

All of this will contribute to the government’s levelling up agenda in one of the most deprived cities in the UK.Itis an opportune moment to activate this heritage building as Bradford readies itself to become the UK City of Culture in 2025.

What the community will do
Under community ownership they intend that the birthplace and its surrounding area will thrive and offer valuable experiences for heritage tourists, for children, families and young people. The asset will enhance the local sense of heritage.

Events and workshops for Bradford school children will help to increase their aspirations. They believe that this community project will increase feelings of pride in Bradford, improve social cohesion and sense of belonging, extend participation in arts and culture to children in deprived areas, increase economic outcomes by encouraging tourism and boosting the local high street and improve social and wellbeing outcomes in the district by creating a shared experience of heritage.

The community will open a café/small restaurant/events space downstairs, expanding slightly the scope and size of the current café (Emily’s). Upstairs the rooms will be decorated in the style of furnishings at the time of the Brontës. They aim to work closely with the Brontë Parsonage Museum, taking guidance from them to create a full Brontë experience.

The rooms will be let via Airbnb, offering experiential nights for national and international tourists some of whom may enjoy starting their journey at the birthplace and taking one of the four Brontë walking routes, experiencing the moors and fells that inspired the Brontë novels as they travel from Thornton to the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth.


The income generated from room hire and lettings will create a sustainable income for the maintenance of the building and for investment in the local community. Building on South Square’s existing experience, this will include writing workshops, activities for schools across the Bradford district, artist commissions and residencies and other activities with a Brontë and local heritage focus.

The project will reach out to the broader Bradford community, working with Bradford Council’s Education Partnerships Team and a variety of schools and academies to access children in the most deprived areas of the city.



The expression of interest to the Community Ownership Fund is to cover 50% of capital requirements and a contribution to revenue funding has just been accepted and we will be putting in our application next week.The remaining financing will be via match funding from a variety of sources andhave launched a Crowdfunder Campaign for part of the match funding https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/bronte-birthplace

The funding bids will be submitted by Thornton and Allerton Community Association (Charity no. 1122128) that runs South Square Centre in Thornton.