Two of the most expensive items acquired by Bronte guardians have arrived at the Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

Emily Bronte’s artist’s box and a miniature poetry manuscript, written by Charlotte as a child, cost the Bronte Society more than £60,000.

The mahogany box which still contains some of Emily’s watercolour blocks and quill pens, was bought at auction in Sotheby’s in London for £32,000 and the miniature work cost 50,000 dollars at a New York auction.

Ann Dinsdale, Bronte Parsonage Museum collections manager, said: “I can’t remember spending that kind of money. But these items are so rare.

“Anything related to Emily is especially collectable and so costly because so little of her things survived.

“Unlike Charlotte, she was not famous until after her death. Charlotte was a celebrity in her own lifetime.

“We must also thank the Victoria & Albert Museum for helping us with a grant from its purchasing fund towards the manuscript and some members of the Bronte Society who gave donations.

“We went to a lot of trouble to acquire these items and it has hit our own acquisitions fund – but it was worth it.”

The treasures go on show at the museum – the former home and shrine to the work of the three sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne – on Monday when it opens to the public for the new season. They will take pride of place in the revamped exhibition rooms. The box is believed to have been bought for Emily, author of Wuthering Heights, as a girl aged about nine in 1827, and the museum has some of the work she made with the equipment.

Charlotte’s manuscript was an “iconic” piece and reflected the imaginative and creative nature of the children when they lived at the museum, Mrs Dinsdale said.

The two poems, written in a minuscule hand, are signed UT, meaning “us two” which Charlotte, who wrote Jane Eyre, and her brother Branwell referred to themselves as.

“We believe it was written so small so that if their father or aunt came across it, they wouldn’t be able to read it,” she added.

The museum opens on Monday from 11am to 5pm, seven days a week, with longer opening hours from April.