Marianne Brocklehurst

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 committed 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]

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]