Staff at the Jane Austen Centre last week were eagerly awaiting the arrival of a box full of items just acquired in a recent auction at The Shambles, a Victorian museum in Gloucester.

Chief among them are two military dress uniforms, along with feathers, gloves and other George III treasures that will soon be added to the Jane Austen Centre's collection.

"There were 21 lots and we won ten in an on-line auction," says general manager Donna Lodge. "We're so excited because it's nice to keep adding to the displays."

Until November 2008 when The Shambles, at Newent, closed its doors for the last time, it was a quaint museum of Victorian life laid out as a small country town of cobbled streets, alleyways, cottages, houses, shops and workshops, all stocked with items of the period.

Now at least some of the paraphernalia will find a new home in the Bath museum which this week celebrates its tenth anniversary.

To mark the occasion the centre has given its exhibition a complete makeover with striking new display boards (designed by graphics student Julia Bolton) that tell the story of Jane's Bath.

The new exhibition begins by showing Bath as the place to go for the 1801 winter season. A couple stand in the Circus looking as though they have just arrived for the season.

"We're still searching for luggage to place alongside them," says Donna, "so if anyone has anything from the period in their attics we'd like to hear from them."

There's a newly created corner of the Assembly Rooms, showing the tea drinking, gambling and dancing that would have provided the amusements of the day.

The display is offset by some rather beautiful shot silk wall hangings whose provenance is very much not of the era. "Oh, we bought those on e-Bay," laughs Donna.

Further into the exhibition is a recreation of Milsom Street, where the current shop will become a milliners with the addition of a whole box full of milliners' tools bought in the auction.

The exhibition also looks at where Jane lived in Bath – there's even a copy of the advert in The Bath Chronicle of May 7 1808 to which Jane's family responded when they were looking for accommodation.

But this 'street' awaits the next stage in the transformation of the centre. Out will go the current carpet tiles and in will come flooring that looks like a pavement – "but we're still looking for the right thing," says Donna.

Another addition, which is newly arrived and so not yet on display, is a prettily assembled school project on Jane Austen that has come all the way from America.

Donna says: "We had an email from a mother in Michigan asking for a pattern for a dress for her daughter Gabrielle who was doing the project. We sent it and then she emailed us photographs, so we asked if she could recreate the project for us. We were so surprised when she sent us the original."

It will go on display in Jane's study.

Outside the study is a copy of the only book Jane wrote in Bath circa 1803-5 – a 1923 edition of The Watsons, the tale of an impoverished family. It was not published until 1871, possibly because of the death of her father which left the Austens with very little money.

They ended up in lodgings in Trim Street, then the haunt of prostitutes and beggars.

One wonders how Jane's mother must have reacted when in 1802 she turned down the offer of marriage from the wealthy Henry Bigg-Wither (now there's a name that should have come straight from a romantic novel) that would have changed all their fortunes.

Everything is brought up to date in the final display of posters and costumes from recent productions, and then there's the shop, with images of the actor Colin Firth who so memorably played Darcy in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice.

"Oh, yes, he's been very good for us," says Emma.

The Jane Austen Centre, at 40 Gay Street, Bath is now free to Bath residents with Discovery Cards and its Regency Tea Rooms are free entry to all.

Jackie Chappell