THE picturesque hamlet of Braithwaite used to be a favourite with Edwardian postcard photographers, who usually attracted the attention of curious locals.

Notoriously, prior to the opening of the Braithwaite-Laycock bypass in 1938, buses used to squeeze through this narrow main street.

A brief 19th-century account describes the site of Braithwaite as formerly being “a wild and open common”, happily transformed into “cultivated land, affording corn and milk to the industrious community of the village”.

By the 1880s the farming community boasted a 200-seater St Matthew’s Church and a small Primitive Methodist Chapel. It also supported a grocer and provision dealer, a blacksmith and a private school.

On March 17, 1794, Braithwaite made educational history when the diary of 18-year-old Abraham Shackleton records how “We begun our school for reading Grammar this Night”. Sixteen residents subscribed a shilling each to attend a homely school two nights a week and another shilling towards starting a modest library – in essence a forerunner of the Keighley Mechanics’ Institute founded in 1825.

Abraham Shackleton went on to compile a lifelong daily weather diary, which incidentally offers a running commentary on the climate the Brontes experienced.