Bell Chapel - Date Stones at Thornton in Yorkshire

These old cut stones marked and inscribed by stone masons are now built into a former window on a wall of the now ruined Bell Chapel, Thornton, Yorkshire

One stone says
This chappell was builded by (cut off) freemason in the yeare of our lorde 1612. I wonder why the name was defaced and cut off the stone?

The Bell Chapel at Thornton, Yorkshire is now famous, although in ruins and replaced by a new Victorian church because a former priest here was Patrick Bronte, father of the famous literary sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne also their brother Branwell.



You can see the date sones in the wall on the photo above.

Emily Bronte (30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was born in the village of Thornton, Yorkshire and wrote one novel Wuthering Heights published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte.

I am lucky, I can walk from where I live across the countryside and up onto the moors above the village of Haworth to where a ruined farmhouse whose location is believed to be the inspiration for the Wuthering Heights farmhouse lies.

Wuthering is a Yorshire word for turbulent weather, Wuthering Heights was written when the Bronte family lived at the now famous Bronte Parsonage at Haworth, Yorkshire