Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl Brassey

The Cypriot antiquities associated with Thomas Brassey were his wife's, and he is the man who dispersed them. He and Annie Brassey toured Cyprus for about twenty days in November and December 1878 aboard the Sunbeam; Lou Taylor stresses the commercial purpose of his visit and his letter to The Times of 26 December 1878¹. Almost 800 Cypriot antiquities reached England from 1885, from excavations paid for by Annie and run through Colonel Falkland Warren^1,2. The dealer Bryce Wright catalogued her general collection and Alfred Maskell her Cypriot antiquities in 1885¹.

After Annie's death in 1887, Brassey completed the Lady Brassey Museum at 24 Park Lane, designed by Maskell, with Cypriot objects in Sections 10 and 11¹. In 1888 he began to disperse them: 59 pieces went to Wolverhampton Museum on 18 April 1888, and others to "Downing" and to the Nicholson Institute, Leek; the Leek items cannot now be found. Symons, in 1984, could place 29 of the pieces with certainty¹. After his death in 1918 his son gave most of the collection to Hastings Corporation in 1919. Taylor reports Julian Porter's belief that some items reached public auctions¹. Brassey was born on 11 February 1836 at Stafford and died on 23 February 1918 in Mayfair³.