The Brontes, Freemasonry and the Knights Templar

This is a link to some research I have been doing for 30 years (on and off) about the Bronte family, authors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre amongst other books. It began when a first edition of Jane Eyre which belonged to my family was stolen.

To cut a long story short, it tells of the Knights Templar arriving in Yorkshire with hoards of treasure, setting up the Bank of England and attempting to create the Bronte legacy through local Freemason lodges. (that really is cutting a long story short because the reasons behind those tenuous links are more intriguing than the links themselves)

I have not published the full story as of yet because it is being serialised in the Haworth newspaper so I dont want to give too much away but as Above Top Secret has been a source of great inspiration to me over the last couple of years I thought it would be nice to share the story so far.

I hope that even people who are not interested in the legacy of the 3 Bronte sisters , these famous forces of literature, will at least find the workings of the Freemasons, their rituals and attempts to control the direction of history fascinating and eye opening.

I'll post more as and when the articles are published and am happy to discuss my research if anyone is interested.

Here is the link to the first article. Jane Eyre and the Knights Templar

Very interesting read OP, looking foreword to the next installments! S&F for you. Good job.

reply to post by GoldenObserver


Thanks very much :-)

I was lucky enough to be invited the the local masonic lodge "The Lodge of the 3 Graces No.408" where i spent the day photographing much of the building and artefacts. They even let me dress as Branwell and go through the initiation rituals. I'll post some images up soon (but i'd like to put them on the newspaper site first)

There is another story too, the one about the set of coincidences that have occurred during the research and as i'm writing those up i'm thinking 'no one is going to believe this'. Fact is sometimes stranger than, in this case, other strange facts !

reply to post by Wobbly Anomaly


very interesting so far. Have you put your whole theory together in a peer reviewed format yet?
I look forward to the next chapter.

reply to post by network dude


Thanks. I'm not even sure if the finished result will lend itself to a peer review, certainly aspects of it would but the whole thing would have to heavily edited. ie. the article ive posted here is more inclined towards referenced research (although i'm not including too much 'proof' at the moment until it is completed. Bronte research, especially new information is very, what's the best way of putting this, desirable to other authors). This is actually the 3rd article ive written, the first 2 are in much more of a story format with the Bronte family wandering across the moors and having adventures with allusions to the 'proper' research. The next couple of articles will be similar and then i'll include another 'straight' article and so on.

It is definitely worth thinking about producing 2 seperate finished works though.

Very interesting. My wife is a huge Bronte fan and I'm a freemason (32nd degree SR), so we've both enjoyed your article.

reply to post by HardToStarboard


Glad you liked it, Thanks. It would interesting to know both your opinions on the masonic references in Jane Eyre, a lot of people do seem to miss them (as you would if you were not acquainted with the subject)

Interestingly I was asked to give a talk by the chair of the Cowling Masonic lodge very shortly after I had written this piece and I've been invited back at Christmas to do a second. (She called herself the chair so i'm presuming the ladies societies use different terminology, I didnt ask, so excuse me if this is wrong) It would be nice to judge the difference in impact between local masonic knowledge and international as they said they were quite excited by it.....but they are very local !

There's a bit of an update since my last post. It turns out that there were rumours with previous residents and staff that the building in question was in fact Ferndean Manor from Jane Eyre so whilst it doesnt feel quite as exclusive it's nice to have some confirmation. They also told me that the house was bought by Amos Nelson (one of the richest men in the UK at the time) as his own private hunting lodge about 100 years ago, so it's back to the library for more squinting at old maps and documents methinks.

In the meantime they have now put up a website about my research and Ive done a little more digging too so here is the latest with a bit more information on why it is called Ferndean and more about the Brontes links to the Knights Templar.

The Brontes, freemasonry and the Knights Templar