Marianne Brocklehurst (1832–1898) was an English traveller and collector of

Egyptian antiquities Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , ''-logia''; ar, علم المصريات) is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious p ...

. She supported a number of Egyptian excavations and donated most of her collection of antiquities to the West Park museum in

Macclesfield Macclesfield is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Bollin in the east of the county, on the edge of the Cheshire Plain, with Macclesfield Forest to its east ...

Personal life

Brocklehurst was one of the eight children of John Brocklehurst, a wealthy

silk manufacturer, and his wife Mary. The family started out in the button making business, but they moved into silk in the 19th century. 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. In 1861 she accepted a marriage proposal from one Henry Coventry, a distant relation of the

Earls of Coventry Earl of Coventry is a title that has been created twice in the Peerage of England. The first creation for the Villiers family was created in 1623 and took its name from the city of Coventry. It became extinct in 1687. A decade later, the second ...

, but her father made her end the relationship because her fiance didn’t have enough money. So Brocklehurst broke off the engagement. She had other suitors, but turned them all away. Her sister Emma said it was because Marianne was “not for marrying.” From the 1870s she shared her life with her companion Mary Booth. Brocklehurst and Booth shared a home, 'Bagstones', at Wincle outside Macclesfield. Brocklehurst died in London in 1898. It is thought she committed suicide. 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.

Egyptology

In 1873 Marianne Brocklehurst and Mary Booth ('the two MBs') visited Egypt. While in Egypt, she met

Amelia Edwards Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards (7 June 1831 – 15 April 1892), also known as Amelia B. Edwards, was an English novelist, journalist, traveller and Egyptologist. Her literary successes included the ghost story "The Phantom Coach" (1864), the novel ...

, another English traveller, who was traveling with Lucy Renshaw and their ladies mai
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. Brocklehurst and Edwards competed with each other in the illegal extraction of antiquities from Egypt. Brocklehurst recounted a story called "How We Got Our Mummy" and it is in the appendix to her published diary. Brocklehurst and Booth returned to Egypt in 1876–1877 and in 1883. Their final trip was in 1890–1891. On the final trip they witnessed the removal of a large quantity of recently removed 21st Dynasty mummies from Thebes. She made several drawings during her trips to Egypt, many of which show up in her published diary and some of which are displayed at various museums. Excavations_at_Deir_el_Bahri_in_1891

Brocklehurst was a funder of excavation efforts. She contributed to Edwards'

Egypt Exploration Fund The Egypt Exploration Society (EES) is a British non-profit organization. The society was founded in 1882 by Amelia Edwards and Reginald Stuart Poole in order to examine and excavate in the areas of Egypt and Sudan. The intent was to study and an ...

, and was an early subscriber to the fund-raising efforts of

Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egypt ...

. 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. There was some dispute between the Brocklehursts and the council about the building of the museum, and she remained in London on the opening day.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brocklehurst, Marianne 1832 births 1898 deaths English travel writers British women travel writers English collectors Women collectors English Egyptologists

Marianne Marianne () has been the national personification of the French Republic since the French Revolution, as a personification of liberty, equality, fraternity and reason, as well as a portrayal of the Goddess of Liberty. Marianne is displayed i ...