Tiny Home Where Brontes Were Born Is Now Open to Public

What inspired not one, not two, but a total of three young women in the Bronte family to write literary masterpieces? If the answers can be found within the walls of where they grew up, fans may soon find what they're looking for: The Bronte Birthplace, a tiny cottage in the UK village of Thornton, where Charlotte (author of Jane Eyre), Emily (Wuthering Heights), and Anne Bronte (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) were all born, has been opened to the public as a museum, reports Smithsonian. Queen Camilla presided over the opening ceremony on May 15, after more than a year of fundraising and refurbishments.

Patrick and Maria Bronte already had two daughters when Charlotte was born in 1816—a year after they'd moved into the Thornton residence near Bradford, per Smithsonian. Emily and Anne followed, in 1818 and 1820, respectively, but the family vacated the premises just a few months after Anne was born and moved to a parsonage in the nearby village of Haworth, where the Bronte patriarch was made a reverend. The building has since served as a butcher's shop and a cafe, the latter of which was closed for good during the COVID pandemic.

"This house is no longer just a place of literary history—it is a living, breathing space filled with creativity, education, and community pride," Katharine Barnett, chair of the Bronte Birthplace, says in a museum statement. Starting in July, the former homestead will also start serving as a hotel, accommodating overnight guests in its bedrooms, per the Guardian. "This will be the only place in the world where you can sleep in the same room that the Brontes slept in," says Nigel West, a volunteer with family ties to the Brontes who helped raise the $700,000 or so needed for the abode's purchase and renovation. "Downstairs, in what is now the cafe, they were born on the floor right in front of the fireplace." (More Bronte sisters stories.)