A tree in the Brontë Parsonage Museum garden was felled on Monday because it had deteriorated and become hazardous to the public.

The cypress pine was one of a pair said to have been planted by Jane Eyre author Charlotte Brontë and her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, as part of their wedding celebrations in the summer of 1854.

The couple married early in the morning at Haworth Parish Church, on June 29, 1854. After the wedding breakfast, Charlotte and Arthur travelled to Ireland for their honeymoon and returned a few weeks later for their wedding reception in the schoolroom opposite the parsonage.

Though the marriage was happy, it was short-lived.

Charlotte died on March 31, 1855, just three weeks before her 39th birthday and in the early stages of pregnancy.

Alan Bentley, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said: "It is with great regret that we have had to remove the tree, but we have taken expert advice and the roots are dying, meaning that the tree has become dangerous.

"Thankfully, some years ago the Brontë Society gathered seeds from the tree and a sapling was grown ready to replace the tree in this eventuality."

The hewn tree will live on in the sapling placed near the other, original Brontë tree planted in 1854.

The Brontë Society also plans to commission an artist to create a work of art out of the felled tree as part of its contemporary arts programme.