Cowan Bridge

Cowan Bridge is a village in the English county of Lancashire.

Cowan Bridge

Cowan Bridge
Cowan Bridge
Location in the City of Lancaster district
Cowan Bridge
Location within Lancashire
OS grid referenceSD634765
Civil parish
District
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townCARNFORTH
Postcode districtLA6
Dialling code015242
PoliceLancashire
FireLancashire
AmbulanceNorth West
UK Parliament

It is south-east of the town of Kirkby Lonsdale where the main A65 road crosses the Leck Beck. It forms part of the civil parish of Burrow-with-Burrow.

Clergy Daughters' School

Cowan Bridge was the site of the Clergy Daughters' School attended by Charlotte and Emily Brontë, the notable 19th-century writers, and their older sisters Maria and Elizabeth, who died after experiencing harsh privations at the school. There is a plaque commemorating this association on the former school building, which partially survives. The churchyard of St Peter's Church, Leck, has graves of several of the children who died at the school.

Charlotte described the abuses, the typhus epidemic in which seven pupils died, the scandal which followed, and subsequent reform of the school in Jane Eyre. The character of Helen Burns is based closely on Maria. Reverend Brocklehurst is a portrait of William Carus Wilson, who managed the school in the Brontës' time. Women readers who had attended the school confirmed Charlotte's account.

In a letter to her publisher W.S. Williams, Charlotte describes overhearing an elderly clergyman talk about reading Jane Eyre and saying "Why, they have got Cowan Bridge School, and Mr. Wilson here, I declare! and Miss Evans." She says, "He had known them all. I wondered whether he would recognise the portraits, and was gratified to find that he did, and that, moreover, he pronounced them faithful and just. He said, too, that Mr. Wilson 'deserved the chastisement he had got.'"[1]

The Clergy Daughters' School still exists. It was moved to Casterton shortly after the scandal. In 1840 another typhus epidemic struck 70 of the pupils, claiming the lives of three. By 1857 Dorothea Beale was teaching there. It was apparent to her that while some of the physical circumstances had improved since Charlotte's time, the spiritual aspects had not changed. When the Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell came out, Beale began to write her own unfavorable impressions of the religious education handed out there.[2]

gollark: It is literally the cheapest ryzen.
gollark: `ssh sinthorions-computer.com cat /proc/cpuinfo`
gollark: That's horrible.#
gollark: processor : 0vendor_id : AuthenticAMDcpu family : 23model : 1model name : AMD Ryzen 3 1200 Quad-Core Processorstepping : 1microcode : 0x800111ccpu MHz : 3410.279cache size : 512 KBphysical id : 0siblings : 4core id : 0cpu cores : 4apicid : 0initial apicid : 0fpu : yesfpu_exception : yescpuid level : 13wp : yesflags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc cpuid extd_apicid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq monitor ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw skinit wdt tce topoext perfctr_core perfctr_nb bpext perfctr_llc mwaitx cpb hw_pstate sme ssbd sev vmmcall fsgsbase bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 rdseed adx smap clflushopt sha_ni xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves clzero irperf xsaveerptr arat npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save tsc_scale vmcb_clean flushbyasid decodeassists pausefilter pfthreshold avic v_vmsave_vmload vgif overflow_recov succor smcabugs : sysret_ss_attrs null_seg spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypassbogomips : 6989.20TLB size : 2560 4K pagesclflush size : 64cache_alignment : 64address sizes : 43 bits physical, 48 bits virtualpower management: ts ttp tm hwpstate eff_freq_ro [13] [14]
gollark: Look, it even lists the bugs!

References

  1. Letter from Charlotte Brontë to W.S. Williams, dated 1848-01-04 in Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle, by Clement K. Shorter, entire text online at gutenberg.org, page found 2010-08-30.
  2. Entries on Dorothea Beale and on the Clergy Daughters' School in A Brontë Encyclopedia by Robert and Louise Barnard. ISBN 978-1-4051-5119-1.




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