'Since I came home I have been very busy stitching...'
According to Elizabeth Gaskell, this room was originally 'a sort of flagged store-room', probably used for fuel, which could only be reached from the outside. Before her marriage in 1854 Charlotte converted the room into a study for her future husband, the Revd. Arthur Bell Nicholls, who in 1845 had come to assist her father as curate at Haworth Church. A fireplace was added to the room and the present doorway created into the entrance hall. Charlotte died within a year of her marriage, and Mr Nicholls remained at the Parsonage to care for the elderly Patrick Brontë and to assist in the performances of his pastoral duties. On Patrick's death in 1861 Mr Nicholls returned to his native Ireland, taking with him many mementoes of the Brontë family. He died in 1906 aged eighty-eight, having survived Charlotte by fifty-one years.
Describing her preparations for the room's conversion in a letter dated 22 May 1854, Charlotte wrote: '...I have been very busy stitching - the little new room is got into order now and the green and white curtains are up - they exactly suit the papering and look neat and clean enough.' Three wallpaper samples were found in Charlotte's writing desk. A fourth sample, held in the New York Public Library, is accompanied by a note, authenticated by Elizabeth Gaskell, which describes it as being a 'Slip of the paper with which Charlotte Brontë papered her future husband's study, before they were married'.
Arthur Bell Nicholls was an extremely reserved man, and as so little is known about him the room has been dedicated to Haworth Old Church, where he served as curate from 1845 to 1861.