Marianne Brocklehurst

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 Brocklehurst was one of the eight children of John Brocklehurst, a wealthy Macclesfield silk manufacturer, and his wife Mary. The family started out in the button making business, but they moved into silk in the 19th century. 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. While in Egypt, she met Amelia Edwards, another English traveller, who was travelling 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. 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. 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. and she remained in London on the opening day.