Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery
The Maidstone Museum & Bentliff Art Gallery houses substantial Fijian and Pacific collections deriving from the voyage of Julius Brenchley on HMS Curaçoa in the mid 19th century (1860s). The Brenchley material is of significant hisotrical interest, predating as it does the early colonial period in Fiji.
Other sections of the Brenchley Collection have been the subject of extensive research, but the Fijian and Western Polynesian objects have never been examined in any coordinated way.
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Mr. Julius Brenchley (1816-1873) was a local Maidstone boy who left Kent in 1845 to travel the world. He spent the majority of the next 28 years building the collections he bequeathed to the museum in 1873. Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery (photo: Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery).