THE BRONTË Society owes a debt of gratitude to those early founding fathers of the society, for their dedication to ‘promoting and commemorating the lives, times, literature and art’ of the Brontë family – Brontë Society chairman steps down due to health (Keighley News, October 9).

Those early stalwarts used to meet in a room above what was the butcher’s shop above what is now the information centre, at the top of Main Street in Haworth.

In 1928, the then Parochial Church Council declared, in modern parlance, Patrick Brontë’s Parsonage was no longer ‘fit for purpose’, and put it up for sale. To our internal gratitude, the Parsonage was purchased by a wealthy benefactor who, having applied for trust status, gifted the Parsonage to the existing members of the Brontë Society, who by law immediately become trustees. We are therefore bound by law to ‘maintain and care for the Parsonage, to hold in trust in perpetuity’ (forever).

It should now be seen and appreciated that since 1928, Brontë Society members worldwide are now trustees of the Brontë Parsonage Trust. We therefore own the Parsonage and every thing in it. We can’t sell it, can’t give it away and, more importantly, no one can take it away from us. John Thirlwell and his ‘co-conspirators’ are in breach of trust law in attempting to do so.

Somewhere along the line, the Parsonage was granted charity status, readily granted by an ‘arm’ of the government, called the Charity Commission, in order (as I see it) to avoid the thousands of charities springing up all over the country from applying for grants for various causes.

So now we have become The Brontë Parsonage Charity Trust. A stand-alone entity responsible for raising our own funds as non-paid members. We trustees cannot pay ourselves for any services rendered, though we can pay for accountancy work etc. Charity Law forbids remunerated employees from having any control over the trust’s governance. Thus any attempt at any sort of takeover by our own employees renders them liable for instant dismissal on those grounds.

We can, by law, employ staff to carry out some duties that may need a full-time operative, such as clerical work, but such numbers must be kept to a minimum to keep costs down.

All this information should therefore stop those spurious efforts by Mr Thirlwell and co dead in the water, and any continuation of his destruction of our Brontë Parsonage Charity Trust is a total waste of time and effort, as we have charity law and trust law on our side!

Go Home Mr Thirlwell, you can’t win.

TONY HOLMES

Kirkby-in-Ashfield