Having received an early Christmas present, a booklet published just 50 years ago about the black-marble clergyman in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, I took the first opportunity of visiting Cowan Bridge and followed field paths to Tunstall Church.

This was the route taken by the children at the Clergy Daughters' School, attended briefly by the Bronte girls in 1825, which was just a year after the school had opened. After attending divine service, they partook of a packed meal in a room in the tower before returning to school.

Cowan Bridge, between Ingleton and Kirkby Lonsdale, and the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, is now well-known for its strident road signs and a retail outlet for jumpers.

The Keighley-Kendal road by-passes the old bridge. On the gable end of a short terrace, and visible from the road, is an inscription relating to the Brontes.

The black-marbled clergyman was none other than the Rev William Carus Wilson, a kindly man judging by the attitudes of his day. At Cowan Bridge, he founded the first Clergy Daughter's School in the land, educating the daughters of clergymen who on their meagre income could not give them the education they deserved.

Charlotte, in her famous novel, resurrected him as Mr Brocklehurst, who was not a god, nor is he even a great and admired man.

In the booklet, the author Jane M Ewbank, opines that before making a judgement on his character and manner towards children, for whom he really cared, we must remember that he is doing no more than reflect a contemporary attitude to children.

All four Bronte girls attended the school. Patrick, the father, brought the two elder daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, personally and stayed in the school, eating his meals with the children. He must have been satisfied with what he saw for he returned a month later bringing Charlotte aged eight and Emily aged six.

Charlotte recalled, with a shiver, her days at Cowan Bridge. Film-makers are apt to portray the scholars moving in crocodile across moorland patchy with snow. Inevitably, the Bronte wind is blowing. It is a pity the young Brontes had not been at school in summer. They might actually have enjoyed their Sunday jaunt.

Charlotte had nothing good to say about the school, attributing the death of Maria through consumption to unhealthy conditions. There were several attacks of low fever, probably a kind of influenza, that spread into the school from the village. But what boarding school, even today, can boast that it does not have epidemics?

The headmaster did send all the girls to his lovely home at Silverdale, overlooking Morecambe Bay, to help their recovery. (Papa called for the Bronte girls on the following day and took them home with him).

Charlotte, who distorted much in the realm of fiction, did not exaggerate the head's religious teaching. He, like many another, was anxious to save the souls of children from the fires of hell and secure for them an everlasting life.

During my visit to Cowan Bridge, I brought to mind another headmaster who featured prominently in the Bronte story but is little known to Bronte fans. He was the Dr William Cartman, a native of Ripon who became a curate at Bingley and headmaster of the Grammar School at Skipton. He was an ancestor of mine.

Cartman was on friendly terms with Charlotte and Patrick, taking services at Haworth Church (and doubtless calling at the Parsonage afterwards for tea and cake). He was one of the calming influences when relations between Patrick Bronte and his curate, the Rev A B Nicholls, were strained following the curate's declaration of love for Charlotte.

When Nicholls was thinking of taking up a missionary job in Australia, Cartman gave him a reference in which he wrote: "I never met with a young man whom in every respect as to his general demeanour and personal qualities I so much admired."

Nicholls did not take the Gospel overseas. He married Charlotte - with her old father's belated blessing.

William Cartman gave Patrick a pair of crampons, which the old parson referred to as an ice apparatus. They fitted him admirably, enabling him to walk safely on snow or ice. Patrick valued the gift as much for the sake of the donor as its own intrinsic worth. It will serve as another prop to old age.

Cartman, my great-great-grandfather, took part in the funeral service for Charlotte and, with the Vicar of Bradford, officiated at the funeral of Patrick, the old father, the head of a family whose life had been attended by so much sorrow.

The coffin was lowered into the vault within the altar rails, coming to rest beside the coffin of his beloved Charlotte.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.