22 Facts About Basil Brown

Basil John Wait Brown was an English archaeologist and astronomer.

Basil Brown's father was a farmer, wheelwright and agent for the Royal Insurance Company.

Basil Brown later attended Rickinghall School and received some private tutoring.

On 27 June 1923 Basil Brown married Dorothy May Oldfield, a domestic servant and daughter of Robert Robin Oldfield, who worked as head carpenter on the Wramplingham estate.

On 27 November 1918 Brown joined the British Astronomical Association at the invitation of W F Denning and A Grace Cook.

Basil Brown observed meteors, the aurora and the zodiacal light for the BAA.

However in 1934 Basil Brown's strained financial circumstances forced him to let his membership lapse.

Basil Brown brought along books spanning the Bronze Age to the Anglo-Saxon period and some excavation reports.

Basil Brown first tackled what was later identified as Mound 3.

Basil Brown excavated what was later called Mound 4, which he found to have been completely emptied of archaeological evidence by robbers.

Basil Brown continued to work on the site in accordance with his contract with Pretty, although excluded from excavating the burial chamber that he had located.

Basil Brown returned again to his work at Stanton Chare in late 1939.

Basil Brown served in the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes and in the Royal Observer Corps post at Micklewood Green and tended the heating boilers of Culford School, Bury St Edmunds.

Basil Brown joined the Ipswich and District Natural History Society and then the District Astronomical Society when it broke away from its parent body.

In 1961 Basil Brown retired from Ipswich Museum, but continued to conduct excavations at Broom Hills in Rickinghall between 1964 and 1968.

Basil Brown uncovered evidence of a Neolithic presence, Roman occupation and the site of a Saxon nobleman's house.

In 1965, during the Broom Hills excavations, Basil Brown suffered either a stroke or a heart attack, which ended his active involvement in archaeological digs.

Basil Brown died on 12 March 1977 of pneumonia at his home in Rickinghall and was cremated at Ipswich crematorium on 17 March.

The regard in which Basil Brown was held is evident from the efforts made by members of the Suffolk Institute to provide him with a pension.

Basil Brown encouraged groups of children to work on his sites, and introduced a whole generation of youngsters to the processes of archaeology and the fascination of what lay under the ploughed fields of the county.

Basil Brown was a central character in the 2021 film The Dig, which retold the events of the Sutton Hoo discoveries.

Basil Brown was played by Ralph Fiennes who was born in nearby Ipswich.