The Brontë family home at Haworth, Yorkshire. © Brontë Parsonage Museum
New artefacts owned by the Brontë family have come to light after residents of their home village, Haworth, were invited to dig out their antiques.
The Brontë Parsonage Museum held "Brontëana surgeries" in October, where items could be assessed by experts to check whether they were related to the family’s history.
The resulting discoveries date back to the early to mid-19th century - around the time when classics such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights were being written at the Parsonage.
They include six books from the Brontës, which are now on loan to the Museum. It is believed that the books were handed on to the family servant, Martha Brown.
Copies of The Family Economist, belonging to Martha's sister, Tabitha, have also been donated to the Museum by a woman living locally.
"We realised that there must be a lot of Brontë-related items brought into the local village after a house sale following Patrick Brontë's death in 1861," explained the Museum's Sarah Laycock.
"Local people would have bought them because they were useful. Only Charlotte Brontë was famous at the time."
A jam pan which was probably part of this house sale is among the items that have been brought forward.
"I think the sale was mainly attended by people looking for bargains, rather than relics," suggested Ann Dinsdale, Collections Manager at the museum.
"We're talking about people who were quite poor."
The Museum hopes to use the item for a new exhibition which will open around in early 2010.
