Our history

Thornton in the early 19th century was a community alive with industry and faith and argument. The Imperial Gazetteer of 1870 recorded no fewer than 13 dissenting chapels in the township alone, a remarkable number for a village of its size, and a sign of just how fervently Thornton's working people organised their own spiritual and social lives outside the established church.

Hill Top, where the Ring O' Bells stands, was part of the original settlement at the top of the village, predating the bypass road built in 1826 that shifted Thornton's main artery lower down the hill. The building you drink in today sat at the heart of that older community, and the records suggest it began life as a Wesleyan chapel house, the meeting room and gathering place for a Nonconformist congregation on the hill above the village.

In March 1815, the Reverend Patrick Brontë arrived in Thornton to take up his post as curate at the Old Bell Chapel on Market Street below. He brought with him his wife Maria and their two small children. Over the next five years, four more children were born in the family's house on Market Street: Charlotte in 1816, Patrick Branwell in 1817, Emily in 1818, and Anne in 1820.

This was the Thornton that surrounded the building at the top of the hill. Patrick was navigating a village deeply divided between his own Anglican congregation and the Nonconformist chapels that served much of the working population. The Wesleyan community gathering in what is now the Ring O' Bells was as much a part of that Thornton as Patrick's own church, its members the weavers and mill workers and quarrymen who made up the fabric of village life while history was quietly being made in a house down the road.

The Brontës left for Haworth in 1820. The building on the hill remained.

Records from the Bradford Family History Society identify the Thornton Wesleyan chapel as Bethesda, a name taken from the Hebrew meaning House of Mercy, a pool in Jerusalem where, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus healed a paralysed man. Bethesda was one of the most popular names for Nonconformist chapels across the north of England in this period, and its presence in Thornton speaks to the seriousness with which the Wesleyan community took their faith and their responsibilities to one another.

The building we now know as the Ring O' Bells is understood to have served as the chapel house for that congregation, its bell loft still intact in the roof space above, silent now but once used to call the community to worship. A Wesleyan school stands further down Hill Top Road, its foundation stone laid on 20th September 1879 by Joseph Cotton Leaf of Ashfield, Thornton, a reminder that the community's commitment to education was as strong as its commitment to faith.

At some point in the building's history, it became a pub. The precise date is something we are still working to uncover, and we have written to the Thornton Antiquarian Society in the hope that their archive of photographs, maps and local records can shed more light on the building's journey from chapel house to licensed premises. If you know anything about that history, we would love to hear from you.

What we do know is that by the time Ann and Clive Preston took it on, the Ring O' Bells already had the bones of something special, something the locals still love to regale. The Prestons turned the Ring O' Bells into one of the most celebrated dining destinations in the Bradford district, winning awards and attracting a following that thought nothing of travelling considerable distances for a meal. They lined the pub with 30 prints of photographs taken by Leo Shackleton in the 1920s, reproduced with the permission of the Shackleton family who still lived in the village, images of working and family life in Thornton that gave the pub a sense of its own community stretching back through the generations. Pictures that still remain in the pub today.

On 26th March 2025, Helen opened the doors again. She brought with her a background that spans both sides of what a pub needs: years managing people and operations at Aldi, and hands-on hospitality experience running the kitchen at the Victoria Hotel in Sandy Lane. She knew how to lead a team and she knew how to feed people well. The welcome was immediate, the food was good, and the regulars came back, which is about as clear a verdict as a pub can receive.

In late 2026, Bradford-based business owner Alex joined as a partner, bringing more than two decades of experience running organisations, managing people, and problem solving. Alex is not a conventional hospitality figure. An engineer by instinct and a business leader by necessity, he carries with him a family tradition of building something better. The instinct to understand something completely before trying to improve it runs in the blood.

Between Helen's knowledge of the building and the hospitality trade, and Alex's grounding in the realities of running organisations, the Ring O' Bells is in good hands. The ambition: put it back on the map, make this one of the best community pubs in West Yorkshire, rooted in its extraordinary history and open to everyone who finds their way up the hill.

The Ring O' Bells sits today where it has always sat, at the top of the hill above Thornton, looking out across Queensbury to the front and the Pennines behind. The Brontë Way passes through the fields below, and the birthplace where Charlotte, Emily and Anne first drew breath is less than a mile down the road. Walkers and locals and literary tourists and people who just fancied a good Sunday lunch find their way up here, as they always have.

The bell loft has been quiet for a long time. But the building is anything but.