Bicentenary of Charlotte Bronte's birthday proves a global affair

Visitors to the Brontë Parsonage Museum came from South Korea, Canada, New Zealand, Italy and the USA as well as across the British Isles.

Many queued up before the museum opened at 10am to ensure they were first in line for a host of special talks, demonstrations and activities on the anniversary day.

Visitors were joined by a host of local residents at the nearby Old School Rooms where a community birthday party was held in Charlotte’s honour.

The birthday celebrations were the biggest event of a year of festivities devoted to Charlotte, which will continue over the next four years to Mark the bicentenariess of her siblings Emily, Anne and Branwell.

Brontë Society spokesman Rebecca Yorke described the day as “tremendous” with both the Parsonage Museum and the Old School Rooms very busy all day.

She said: “"We had people queuing outside before we opened the doors and at the head was a woman from Sussex who'd promised herself she'd be first into the parsonage on Charlotte's birthday.

"We have people coming from all over the world just to be here on such a special day and that, combined with the fantastic weather has made for an absolutely wonderful atmosphere that suited the occasion.”

Great British Bake Off contestant Sandy Docherty presented a specially created fruitcake, featuring a portrait of Charlotte.

Entertainment in the school room – where Charlotte taught in the 18th century – included pianist Charlotte Jones, Eddie Lawler the ‘bard of Saltaire’, and children from Haworth Primary School performing scenes from Jane Eyre.

Actors and musicians from previewed songs for a new musical due to be performed as part of a newly-announced Brontë season at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.

Among the museum visitors were Seongyi Yi from Seoul, who stood quietly in the corner of the’s garden where the Bronte children played, paying her own tribute by wearing a home-made dress copied from a portrait of her literary heroine.

She and husband Sun Park spent their honeymoon in Haworth two years ago and had returned purely to pay homage.

"Villette is my favourite novel, I read it as a young girl and identified very much with the main character," said musical composer Seongyi Yi.

"We had to come and celebrate her bicentenary and my wife only finished her dress at 3am," said computer game designer Mr Park.

In Haworth, Canadian sisters Karin and Jasmin Murray-Bergquist had arrived as part of a literary tour of the Britain and were making bird-shaped birthday cards with craft teacher Julia Ogden at the Old Schoolhouse, restored by the Bronte Society and where Charlotte once taught.

The cards were in reference to Charlotte Bronte's famous line in Jane Eyre: "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."

"Karin was giving a paper at a conference in Orkney and then we drove down from Glasgow stopping at Wordsworth's Dove Cottage, sailing on Coniston like Swallows and Amazons and then of course we had to come here," said freelance costume designer Jasmin.