Steampunk festival held in Bronte’s Haworth
Event highlights include tea duelling, burlesque shows and parades. …
Image copyright PA Media Hundreds of steampunks have descended on the Pennine village of Haworth for a festival dedicated to the genre.
The event features parades, fashion shows, music and burlesque acts.
Tea duelling – who can keep a dunked biscuit intact for the longest – is another highlight and in keeping with the movement’s courteous ethos.
Steampunk began as a sub-genre of science fiction which imagines a future powered by steam and clockwork but from a Victorian perspective.
Image copyright PA Media 
Image copyright PA Media The two-day event also included photography shoots and performances from burlesque star Velma Von Bon Bon and music from Mr B – The Gentleman Rhymer.
Organisers said Haworth, home to the Bronte sisters, provided the perfect setting for a steampunk event because of its cobbled streets and Victorian aesthetic and buildings.
Image copyright PA Media Michael Young, one of the organisers, said it was a great atmosphere and one of his favourite events was the tea duelling discipline, which “takes real skill” and can only be played with malted milk biscuits.
You might also be interested in
Which vintage girls’ toys are most collectable?
Manga artist brings ‘gothic-cute’ to Cumbria
The life of a female chimney sweep
Image copyright PA Media 
Image copyright PA Media The genre draws on the influences of sci-fi novelists HG Wells and Jules Verne.
According to one participant, Alan Chapman, steampunk imagines “the future from a Victorian perspective”, where machinery “would be clockwork or steam-powered”.
Over the years it has evolved into a lifestyle movement. Mr Chapman’s wife Jackie said she enjoyed the social side of it – “getting dressed up and becoming a different person.”
Proceeds from the event are being donated to the Sue Ryder Manorlands hospice in Oxenhope.
More stories from across Yorkshire
Image copyright PA Media 
Image copyright PA Media 
Image copyright PA Media 
Image copyright PA Media 
Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to yorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk.
About The Author
