Remember the first time you heard Wuthering Heights? I was four years old. I believed Kate Bush was a ghost, and I loved her – her spooky voice, her red dress shimmering in the mists of Salisbury Plain. I wasn’t alone. Across the globe, millions of devoted fans across the globe are still drawn to the depth of emotion and melodrama in that song; the theatricality and accessibility of the dance.
Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever
It’s this devotion which gives rise to the ‘Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever’. From Melbourne to Berlin, Paris to Oslo, thousands of people meet on or around 30 July to celebrate the shared birthday of Emily Brontë and Kate Bush in a ‘mass wuther’. All ages, all genders, together they dance the famous Wuthering Heights choreography in flowing red dresses and Kate Bush wigs.
Tomorrow, for the first time, the global Mass Wuther comes home – to Haworth, the setting of Wuthering Heights. Dog walkers in Penistone Country Park will encounter a sea of red as 500 costumed dancers recreate Kate Bush’s moves in the very landscape which inspired the book and the song. For me, Suzanne Triggs and Sophie Bramley, the three unpaid co-organisers, it’s a labour of love: an unforgettable opportunity to celebrate the creative genius of Kate Bush and Emily Brontë.
In your face, Heathcliff!
This celebration has a serious side to it as well. In these dark, divided political times, anything which brings us together has a new importance. The event has been supported by Calder Valley Happy Valley Pride, and is a clear statement of unity between LGBTQ+ communities and our allies. In the tradition of the global Most Wuthering Heights Days, it’s also an event which foregrounds women. Whilst tickets are free, all participants are encouraged to donate to Women’s Aid who support women and girls affected by domestic violence: in your face, Heathcliff!
At the core of the event is a celebration – and a defence – of the ‘wily, windy moors’ of the novel and the song. Not only are they home to the tortured story of Cathy and Heathcliff, they are also a unique habitat for red-listed birds such as curlew, lapwing and skylark, and have internationally recognised breeding populations of merlin and golden plover. Walshaw Moor has European-level environmental protections (now UK law post-Brexit). It is a Special Protection Area for the species that live and breed there, and a Special Area of Conservation for the habitat that sustains them.
Protecting Walshaw Moor
Walshaw Moor stretches from Top Withens to East Lancashire – and is primarily peatland. Peatlands play a crucial role in protecting us from climate change – globally, peatlands hold at least twice the carbon stored by forests. Although 80% of the UK’s peatlands have been drained, stripped or otherwise damaged, they still contain over three billion tonnes of carbon – more than all the forests of the UK, France and Germany combined. The blanket bog which forms the top layer of peat can absorb up to 20 times its own weight in rainwater, helping to mitigate flooding in the Upper Calder Valley.
Yet this vital landscape could become the site of a massive industrial complex: Calderdale Energy Park (formerly Calderdale Wind Farm). There will be 41 turbines, each 200m high (two thirds the height of the London Shard) and with a 170m rotor diameter. There will be a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), an electricity sub-station and a huge amount of infrastructure including aggregate tracks snaking across the moor to each turbine.
Consider, if you will, that a footprint in peat can last for 25 years, and that peat grows at a rate of 1mm a year. Some of the peat on Walshaw Moor has been growing since the Bronze Age. It is 3,000 years old. Once peat is disturbed, it begins to emit carbon, rather than store it. This will be a very dirty wind farm.
The development is opposed by major ecological and heritage organisations, including the RSPB, CPRE – the Countryside Charity, and the Brontë Society. Nevertheless, an application for a development consent order is expected to be submitted to the planning inspectorate in June 2026.
Impact on Haworth and its Brontë heritage
All of which translates to – this existential threat to these extraordinary moors is very real. It comes as a particular shock to the people of Haworth, which relies heavily on its moorland and its Brontë heritage.
People began to come to Haworth soon after the death of Charlotte Brontë, the last surviving sister, in 1855. Patrick Brontë, the father of these extraordinary children, was bemusedly dealing with curious visitors until he died in 1861, and Haworth gradually became the literary landmark it is today, now second only to Stratford-on-Avon in terms of visitor numbers. The Brontë Parsonage Museum has over 80,000 visitors every year and Haworth is regarded as the jewel in the tourism crown in West Yorkshire.
Hundreds of local businesses – from the shops and restaurants which line the iconic cobbled Main Street, to the hotels, guesthouses and holiday cottages spread across the wider area –thrive as part of the tourist industry. As well as the village, the surrounding moorland attracts people from all over the world who walk up to Top Withens: the signposts, which are written in both English and Japanese, attest to this.
In celebration, in protest and in hope
We need clean, green energy. But energy produced built on peat is not green. Energy produced at an irreversible cost to threatened species is not green. Energy produced at an immense cost to Northern communities, only to meet our ever-growing demands for energy, is not justified, nor is it clean.
Tomorrow, we dance in celebration, in protest, and in hope.
