About the Project & The Discovery
The Bennet Diaries Project was established in 2024 following the remarkable discovery of a significant collection of primary source material related to the life and thoughts of Bradbury Bennet, a hitherto almost unknown gentleman-naturalist of Somerset. Our mission is to transcribe, annotate, and make this unique archive accessible to both the scholarly community and the wider public.
The Discovery
In the spring of 2024, during a routine structural survey of the library at The Larches, Bennet’s former family estate near Frome, a stonemason uncovered a concealed deed box within a wall cavity behind a row of bookshelves. The box, sealed for over a century, contained a collection of leather-bound volumes: the personal journals of Bradbury Bennet, spanning from 1819 to 1862.
The diaries are a chronicle of an age of steam, spiritualism, and spectacle, recorded by a man who preferred “the observable logic of a beetle’s wing to the soaring assertions of the drawing-room messiah”. Written in a meticulous, often cramped hand, the entries reveal a mind of rare scientific precision and dry, ironic wit. Bennet’s writings offer an invaluable counter-narrative to the prevailing romantic and spiritualist currents of his time.
The Curator
Dr. Evelyn Reed
The transcription and analysis of the Bennet Diaries are being overseen by Dr. Evelyn Reed, Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Science at the University of Bristol. Dr. Reed’s primary field of research is Victorian intellectual history, with a focus on the intersection of natural philosophy and the rise of amateur scientific societies in 19th-century Britain.
“Bennet is a ghost at the feast of the Victorian era. He saw the world with a clarity that was both a gift and a burden. His diaries don’t just record events; they dissect the very anatomy of belief and folly. To bring his voice to light is not merely an act of archival recovery, but one of intellectual restoration.” - Dr. E. Reed