Bronte sisters: Memorial edited after nearly 85 years

During their shorts lives, Charlotte wrote the works Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette, Emily put out Wuthering Heights, and Anne published The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey.

The diaereses, the name for the two dots above the “e” at the end of the Bronte name, were omitted when it originally commemorated the novelists on October 8, 1939 amid the outbreak of the Second World War.

The stone tablet was installed on October 9 1939, and has been missing the dots (diaeresis) over the Es for 85 years (Image: Aaron Chown/PA) Journalist and Bronte historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Bronte Society Gazette, raised the issue with the Dean of Westminster, The Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle and the Abbey asked its stonemason to tap the dots in and its conservator to paint them.

Ms Wright, who went to Poets’ Corner for a research trip, said that the dots being left off the sisters’ names “really troubled” her as “the names of the Bronte sisters were spelled incorrectly, they didn’t have the correct punctuation on the e” so it sounded more like “Bront” not “Bronte”.

The memorial to Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte. (Image: Aaron Chown/PA)Ms Wright was “really puzzled” that in 85 years she seemed to be “the first person on record” to complain about the fact the dots had been omitted.

She added: “There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really.

“And it’s lovely because it’s 85 years since it went in, in October. So it’s a sort of timely happy ending, isn’t it nice?”

Ms Wright, who is from Bradford, not far from where the sisters lived in Haworth, says: “These three Yorkshire women, deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”

After receiving a request earlier this year from the Brontë Society the Abbey has arranged for them to finally be added. (Image: Aaron Chown/PA) In a statement, Rebecca Yorke, director of the Bronte Society, said the group was “very grateful to the Dean of Westminster and his colleagues at the Abbey for their positive response to Sharon’s inquiries”.

She added: “As the Brontes and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial.”

The Dean of Westminster said: “I am grateful to have this omission pointed out and now put right.

“Memory is not a locked cupboard, but an active thing and the Bronte Society have given us a glimpse of their commitment to a lively remembering.”