VISITORS to a charity coffee morning are being offered the chance to tuck into a little piece of literary history.

The Shelley Theatre will be supporting Macmillan Cancer Research by serving tea and cakes tomorrow morning.

But in a twist on the usual coffee morning fare, their cakes will be filled with jam made from the mulberry tree planted by Sir Percy Florence Shelley more than 120 years ago.

The tree is the last of three that the family is documented to have planted and has a protection order on it. Shelley Theatre volunteer Jan Roberts offered to make the jam, two jars of which will also be auctioned off this Saturday.

Venue manager Matthew White said: “We were planning a coffee morning for Macmillan but I didn’t know about the mulberry tree until somebody told me about it.

“There was then a kind of a light bulb moment when I realised we could make some produce from a tree that the Shelley family themselves planted. We are a charity ourselves and used to trying to fundraise for ourselves so it’s nice to be able to do something, however small, for another charity.”

Shelley Manor was purchased by Sir Percy Florence and Lady Shelley in 1849 and they moved into the house following Mary Shelley’s death in 1851.

It was eventually sold to the council in the 1930s and was used by various organisations before the council took back control of the building in 2001.

In recent years it has been transformed, with new apartments and a doctor’s surgery built on the site. The theatre was refurbished and hosted its first play at the end of 2010.

All are welcome to the coffee morning, which starts at 10.30am.