New housing near Thornton may get streets named after Brontës

Streets on a new housing development in West Yorkshire are set to be named after the Brontë sisters and their books.

The 160 homes will be built near to the village of Thornton where the literary sisters were born.

Proposed names include Charlotte Brontë Way, Jane Eyre Lane and Wuthering Heights.

Bradford Council will consider whether to approve the names at a planning meeting next week.

As well as roads honouring Charlotte, Emily and Anne, their mother, step-mother, father and wayward brother Branwell, will also get streets named after them.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the planning meeting will be told that the street names were part of a push to better recognise "pioneering women" from the Bradford area.

Current legislation requires the decision to name a street after a person to undergo much more scrutiny than usual road naming.

The proposed road names are Charlotte Brontë Way, Villette Row, Shirley Mews, Jane Eyre Lane, The Professor Close, Brontë Way, Anne Bronte Avenue, Agnes Grey Lane, Elizabeth Brontë Mews, Branwell Brontë, Close, Emily Brontë Road, Maria Brontë Drive, Patrick Brontë Court and Wuthering Heights.

Born in the first part of the 19th Century the children grew up in the parsonage in Haworth, where their father Patrick Brontë was the local vicar.

All four wrote poetry and novels from an early age, with the women writing their works initially under pen names.

Emily published her only novel Wuthering Heights, inspired by the moors near her home, in 1847 at the age of 30. She died of tuberculosis the following year.

Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre, and Anne, who wrote Agnes Grey and the The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, also died young.

Their brother Branwell, who wrote poetry and painted, died in 1848 at the age of 31 after becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol.