IF the walls of Haworth's Bronte Parsonage could talk, there'd be enough material to rival any novel written by the famous literary family.

Encouraged by their father, the siblings devoured poetry, novels and newspapers which fired their imaginations, turning their draughty moorside home into a hotbed of creativity.

Inspired by charismatic figures from history, literature and their present, the sisters wrote about the human condition far beyond their own experiences. Their diaries reveal that they wrote at a drop-leaf table which they walked around each evening, reading out what they'd written that day. It was a significant part of their daily routine, which Charlotte is said to have continued after surviving her sisters.

Now that drop-leaf table is back at the Parsonage, 150 years after it was sold following Patrick Bronte's death. The table came home after the Bronte Society secured a £580,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and is on show to visitors following the museum's winter break.

Nothing tells a story quite like a table where generations of families have gathered to share food, discussions and snippets of their lives.

Around the time the Brontes were walking around their table, reading handwritten versions of what were to become world-famous classics, a family in a corner of the East Midlands was gathering around another Victorian table. This was a dining-table passed down generations of my maternal family until the 1970s, when it was given to my parents by my gran. It's the table we used for special occasions, such as Christmas dinners, and in between it was strewn with the paraphernalia of family life, such as my mum's arts and crafts clutter, my brother's Subbuteo set and my homework.

These days the old table stands in my flat, and often has a cat lying across it. I sit around it with family and friends, for breakfast, lunch and the occasional romantic dinner. Standing with four Edwardian chairs also passed down as companions, the table looks out of place, not having anything in common with the rest of the room, but it feels like family and I can't part with it.

It appears in old family photographs, revealing snapshots of life from before I was born. In one photo my parents are newly engaged, raising a glass to their future. In another my gran is a carefree young woman in a party hat, far removed from the stern old lady I remember her as.

It's a piece of furniture that has witnessed countless highs and lows over the past 150 years. I've never written another Wuthering Heights at that table, but I've enjoyed plenty of happy roast dinners on it, and the story of my life is ingrained in its old, scratched wood.