Vivian Stevens and Maria Mayall penned the following notes, which were published in The Upper Wylye Parish News, November 2006:
Local And Notable – Past And Present
Miss Etheldred Benett, 1775-1845
Etheldred Benett was born on 22nd July 1775 at Pyt House, Tisbury, one of five children of Thomas Benett and his wife Catherine (nee Darell). In 1802 they moved to Norton House, Norton Bavant, which had been owned by the family since the Reformation. One of Etheldred’s brothers, John, married Lucy Lambert, half sister of Aylmer Bourke Lambert of Boyton, and it was the latter who encouraged her interest in fossils, and her sister Anna Maria’s in botany. Etheldred lived at Norton House for most of her life, spending many summers at Weymouth “where I cannot help collecting the fine fossils of the place.” She has been described as “the first woman geologist”. Mary Anning may have become more famous, but she was not born until 1799.
By 1809 Etheldred had already collected or acquired an impressive collection of fossils which she showed to the archaeologist William Cunnington of Heytesbury. She corresponded with the leading geologists of the day, including William Smith, James Sowerby, and Gideon Mantell, the discoverer of Iguandon and other British dinosaurs. She recognised the importance of stratigraphy and commissioned a bed-by-bed stratigraphic section of Upper Chicksgrove quarry. She also kept the first specimens of fossil molluscs, demonstrating that soft anatomy could be preserved. She established a “stratigraphically controlled, geographically documented, working collection” (Torrens). In 1831 details of her collection were published as part of Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s “History Of Modern Wiltshire”, and later that year she had an illustrated edition published privately. “A catalogue of the Organic Remains of the County of Wilts.” was mostly distributed among her friends. Her letter to Hoare accompanying her catalogue summarises her findings:
“Our county, and particularly the southern part of it, is exceedingly rich in Organic Remains; and is not less interesting to the Geologist than to the Antiquary. Numerous Elephants’ Teeth were dug up some years since at Fisherton Anger, near Salisbury, proving the Diluvian Detritus to exist there.
“The London Clay is found at Clarendon Park, in a field on the road side leading to Romsey. The Plastic Clay occurs on Chittern Down, near Heytesbury; and the Beach pebbles found there, form the pavement of the ladies’ grottoes of the surrounding neighbourhood.
“The downs are of great extent, on this side of the County; and the fossil contents of those of Norton Bavant, Heytesbury, and their immediate vicinity, bear a close resemblance to those of Sussex; but those of Warminster and Clay Hill [Cley Hill], are essentially different, and much more sparing in their fossil contents; while on the contrary, the Chalk of Pertwood, Chicklade, Berwick St. Leonard, and Wiley [Wylye], all near Hindon; and Ditchampton, near Wilton; is remarkable for the abundance of its Alcyonic Remains, chiefly in Flints, Echini, etc.; all of which vary materially from of the other places specified.
“The Chalk Marl, which is so local as to have been altogether unnoticed by Mr. Wm. Smith, is exceedingly well defined at Norton Bavant, at Bishopstrow, and at Stourton.
“The town of Warminster stands on the Green Sand; and the remains of Alcyonia with which it abounds, more particularly on the west of the town, seem almost inexhaustible; a few remains of Testacea are sparingly scattered among them, but at Chute Farm [Shute Farm], near Longleat, in a field called Brimsgrove, it would seem, said the late Mr. Wm. Cunnington, as if a cabinet had been emptied of its contents, so numerous, and so various, were the Organic Remains found there; now become scarce; but chiefly small species.
“At Crockerton, south-west of Warminster, the Clay from below the Sand makes its appearance, with its accompanying fossils; and the same occurs at Rudge, near Chilmark. Fossil Remains, similar to that at Highgate, is found at both places, but very sparingly, and at both the Clay is used for brick and pottery . . . . . .”
Etheldred was under no illusions about the difficulties women found in her field. She remarked that: “Scientific people in general have a very low opinion of my sex,” and that “a lady going into the quarries is a signal for men begging money for beer.” She was justifiably irritated when the Imperial Natural History Society of Moscow made her a member, but sent the diploma to “Dominum Etheldredum Benett.” However, she was not entirely above vanity. In 1837 she sent a silhouette of herself to Samuel Woodward, commenting: “Such as [the artist] has made me in bonnet, cap and velvet spencer you have me; or rather, I should say, you have me not, for I do not think it will give you the least idea of me. The dress I am never seen in but in my pony carriage and it makes me look at least ten years older than I am.” An acquaintance took a less flattering view: “Old Miss Bennett (sic) was a masculine and eccentric old subject. She used to ride into Warminster shopping in an old gig (driven by her manservant) wearing a drab coachman’s sort of great coat with six or eight capes to it, and a cottage bonnet of the old type – like looking up a tunnel to find her face at the extreme end of it.”
Despite indifferent health towards the end of her life, Etheldred was heavily involved in village affairs. In a letter to Gideon Mantell in 1837 she bemoans the loss of their vicar: “who is known, beloved and respected by all the lower classes as well as the higher wherever he has been,” and his replacement by “the Archdeacon of Barbados, who has been twelve years in the West Indies and is returning in broken health wanting a quiet cure and little to do when no place in the Kingdom requires a pastor than this village does at the present time.” A year later she was worrying about the restoration of the church: “My mind has been occupied, I may say entirely engrossed, by one subject the last three or four months at least: the pulling down and rebuilding our Parish Church, a work in which there is always many difficulties to encounter; and as this Place has been our family residence for more than four hundred years, and the old Church contained the remains of our Ancestors for that period we know; we mean to lie there ourselves, it is a work of more than common interest to us; Parish Committees are naturally for doing things at the least possible expense to themselves, while we as naturally want it well done . . . . . “
Etheldred Benett died on 11th January 1845 at Norton House. She has already donated duplicates in collection to friends and various institutions. The major part of the remainder was bought by Dr. Thomas Bellerby Wilson shortly after her death and presented by him to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, where it still is. H.S. Torrens wrote that: “In addition to identifying numerous fossils, Benett named an ammonite, a gastropod, four bivalves and twenty sponges . . . . ” Her memorial tablet in the Benett chapel in Norton Bavant church says simply: “In memory of Etheldred, second daughter of Thomas Benett Esq., of Pythouse and Catherine his wife, who died January 11th 1845 aged 69. She had been 43 years an inhabitant of the mansion house in this Parish of Norton Bavant.”