TREASURED Shelley family relics and manuscripts once kept in a special room in Boscombe have gone on show at Oxford’s Bodleian Library.

Shelley’s Ghost, an exhibition telling the story of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his remarkable relatives, draws heavily on links with Shelley Manor. Boscombe Manor, as Shelley Manor Medical Centre at Shelley Park was called in the 19th century, was the home of Percy Bysshe’s son Sir Percy Shelley.

His wife Jane created the Shelley Sanctum where only a very few favoured friends were allowed to enter.

The poet had drowned in a sailing boat accident off the Italian coast in 1822. His wife Mary lived to 1851, which was just after Percy and Jane purchased Boscombe Manor.

Sir Percy hoped that his mother would live with them but Mary never saw Bournemouth although today her body lies in St Peter’s churchyard. Lady Shelley lived to the end of the century leaving two-thirds of her collection to the Bodleian and it was not until 2004 that the the library was able to purchase final part of the archive from later descendants.

The exhibition has a Shelley Sanctum section showing objects once in the small room which had a domed ceiling painted with stars. It was lit only by a red lamp.

There is Shelley’s left glove, his pen along with his watch with chain and seals. There are also numerous locks of hair belonging to Shelley, his wife Mary and their friends including Lord Byron and his mistress Teresa Guiccioli.

Particularly attractive is a plate with a simple modern decoration used by vegetarian Shelley for bread and raisins during the time Mary was writing Frankenstein. Her novel has its own dedicated area. Shelley’s friends were invited to stay at Shelley Park by Jane.

Among them was Thomas Jefferson Hogg who had been a fellow student at Oxford. He is depicted at Boscombe playing chess by artist Reginald Easton who years earlier had painted Mary Shelley several times.

Sir Percy enjoyed entertaining the guests with plays in his own theatre which still exists inside the recently refurbished Shelley Park.

He painted a backdrop showing his father’s last home at Lerici in Italy. Some of Sir Percy’s sketches are on show in The Poet’s Son & Daughter-in-Law section.

Another visitor was Edward Trelawny who had organised Shelley’s cremation on the beach at Viareggio and snatched the heart from the flames. That surviving fragment of the poet’s body rested in the Shelley Sanctum until being placed in the Shelley tomb at St Peter’s.

A delightful surprise is an early photograph of Jane Shelley sitting between the poet’s sisters Hellen and Margaret. The picture was taken at Boscombe by Sir Percy in the 1860s.

Among the souvenirs in the Bodleian shop is a fridge magnet based on a small box with the words ‘LIBERTY and Free Election’ on the lid and once in Boscombe’s Shelley Sanctum.

Shelley’s Ghost is being staged in partnership with the New York Public Library which holds the diaries of Harriet Grove who was for a time the fiancee of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Her writings reveal that although Shelley never visited Bournemouth he did know of it through her letters. In 1810 she accompanied the town’s founder Lewis Tregonwell to ‘Bourne’ to see the chosen spot for the first house.

• Shelley’s Ghost is at the Bodleian Library, Oxford daily until Sunday 27 March; admission free.

• Leigh HattsAuthor of Bournemouth’s Who Was Who (Natula £11.95)