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Marianne Brocklehurst

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Marianne Brocklehurst on Horseback, by Henry Calvert, 1853

Marianne Brocklehurst (1832–1898) was an English traveller and collector of Egyptian antiquities. She supported a number of Egyptian excavations and donated most of her collection of antiquities to the West Park museum in Macclesfield.

Personal life

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Brocklehurst was one of the eight children of John Brocklehurst, a wealthy Macclesfield silk manufacturer, and his wife Mary.[1][2] The family started out in the button making business, but they moved into silk in the 19th century.[2] Marianne was born in 1832 and had traveled widely with her sister Emma from when she was around 20 years old. She had an early interest in archaeology and photography.[2]

In 1861 she accepted a marriage proposal from one Henry Coventry, a distant relation of the Earls of Coventry, but her father made her end the relationship because her fiance didn’t have enough money. So Brocklehurst broke off the engagement.[3] She had other suitors, but turned them all away. Her sister Emma said it was because Marianne was “not for marrying.”[4] From the 1870s she shared her life with her companion Mary Booth.[5] Brocklehurst and Booth shared a home, 'Bagstones', at Wincle outside Macclesfield.

Brocklehurst died in London in 1898. It is thought she died by suicide.[6] Booth inherited the property and lived there until her own death in 1912. They are buried in the same grave, with a joint gravestone, in the churchyard at Wincle.[6]

Egyptology

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West Park museum, Macclesfield

In 1873 Marianne Brocklehurst and Mary Booth ('the two MBs') visited Egypt.[7] While in Egypt, she met Amelia Edwards, another English traveller, who was traveling with Lucy Renshaw and their ladies maid Jenny Lane. The two parties sailed together in a flotilla up the Nile. Edwards later published her account of the journey in the bestselling A Thousand Miles up the Nile (1877). Brocklehurst's own travel diary of the voyage was published in 2005.[5][8] Brocklehurst and Edwards competed with each other in the illegal extraction of antiquities from Egypt.[9][10] Brocklehurst recounted a story called "How We Got Our Mummy" and it is in the appendix to her published diary.[5] Brocklehurst and Booth returned to Egypt in 1876–1877 and in 1883.[11] Their final trip was in 1890–1891.[6] On the final trip they witnessed the removal of a large quantity of recently removed 21st Dynasty mummies from Thebes.[6]

She made several drawings during her trips to Egypt, many of which show up in her published diary[5] and some of which are displayed at various museums.

These drawings by Marianne Brocklehurst show the excavations at Deir el Bahri in 1891

Brocklehurst was a funder of excavation efforts. She contributed to Edwards' Egypt Exploration Fund, and was an early subscriber to the fund-raising efforts of Flinders Petrie.[6] Through these connections she acquired a number of artefacts. Brocklehurst offered funding to the local council to build a museum to hold these objects, and as a result Macclesfield's West Park museum was opened in 1898.[6] There was some dispute between the Brocklehursts and the council about the building of the museum,[12] and she remained in London on the opening day.[6]

References

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  1. ^ Whistow, Thelma (2004). Marianne Brocklehurst : benefactor, explorer, artist : her life and times 1832-1898. Macclesfield Museums Trust. Macclesfield: Macclesfield Museums Trust. ISBN 978-1870926447. OCLC 56774718.
  2. ^ a b c Bray, Jean (2000). The Lady of Sudeley. Long Barn Books. p. 9.
  3. ^ Bray, Jean (2004). The Lady of Sudeley. Sutton Publishing Ltd. p. 70. ISBN 0750937203.
  4. ^ Bray, Jean (2004). The Lady of Sudeley. Ebrington, UK: Long Barn Books. p. 32.
  5. ^ a b c d Brocklehurst, Marianne (2004). Miss Brocklehurst on the Nile : diary of a Victorian traveller in Egypt. Disley: Millrace. ISBN 978-1902173146. OCLC 57209390.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Serpico, Margaret (2015). Beyond Beauty (PDF). Two Temple Place.
  7. ^ Rushby, Pamela (2015). "MISS BROCKLEHURST AND THE WEST PARK MUSEUM" (PDF). Nova.
  8. ^ "Ancient Egypt Magazine - Reviews". www.ancientegyptmagazine.co.uk. Retrieved 27 October 2018.
  9. ^ "Ancient Egypt Magazine - Reviews". www.ancientegyptmagazine.co.uk. Retrieved 27 October 2018.
  10. ^ Hilary, Forrest (2011). Manufacturers, mummies, and Manchester : two hundred years of interest in and study of Egyptology in the Greater Manchester area. Oxford, England: Archaeopress. pp. 5–7. ISBN 978-1407307886. OCLC 727021178.
  11. ^ Dawson, Warren (December 1947). "Letters from Maspero to Amelia Edwards". The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. 47: 66–89. doi:10.1177/030751334703300110. JSTOR 3855441. S2CID 192237250.
  12. ^ Griffiths, Sarah Jane (2006). The charitable work of the Macclesfield silk manufacturers, . (PDF).
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