A TV historian helped to mark the 200th anniversary of a world-famous author’s last journey from her home in Hampshire.

Lucy Worsley, known for presenting history programmes for the BBC, laid flowers on the memorial plaque at the site of Jane Austen’s cottage at Chawton, now Jane Austen’s House Museum.

Worsley paid tribute to the novelist by reading the last letter she wrote from Chawton detailing her ill health and her plans to soon leave Chawton for Winchester.

Jane Austen departed from her home to be nearer her doctor on May 24, 1817.

Two months later on July 18 she died in a house in College Street.

The memorial plaque, which is a highly popular spot for visitor photos, was originally unveiled on the centenary of Jane Austen’s death on 18th July 1917.

With funding from the Jane Austen Society of North America, the plaque has recently been conserved in time for the bicentenary commemorations.

Ms Worsley is an ambassador for Jane Austen’s House Museum, as well as the author of Jane Austen At Home, due to be published on May 18.

Jane Austen’s House Museum is an independent museum dedicated to the life and work of Jane Austen, one of the most popular and important novelists that England has ever produced.

It is of international importance as the place where she spent the last eight years of her life and wrote or revised all her novels.