Basil Brown

Basil John Wait Brown
The iconic helmet discovered by Brown's excavations in East Anglia
Born	(1888-01-22)22 January 1888 Bucklesham, Suffolk
Died	12 March 1977(1977-03-12) (aged 89) Rickinghall, Suffolk
Occupation	Archaeologist
Years active	1932 to c.1960
Known for	Excavations at Sutton Hoo

Basil John Wait Brown (22 January 1888 – 12 March 1977) was a farmer, archaeologist, amateur astronomer and author who most famously discovered the buried ship at Sutton Hoo and excavated its sandy outline on the eve of war in 1939.

Although he has been described as an 'amateur archaeologist', his work as such was frequently paid. He was, indeed, one of the first to make a career as a paid excavation employee for a provincial museum. Although this was his second career and was interrupted by the War, it spanned more than thirty years. After the failure of his smallholding in around 1932, at about the time when he published his work on Astronomical Atlases (a subject of interest since childhood), he began to investigate the countryside near his home in north Suffolk in search of Roman remains.

After the discovery, excavation and successful removal to Ipswich Museum of a Roman kiln at Wattisfield, Basil Brown worked for a short time with Mr Gale at Stuston, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, before being taken on, on a near full-time basis, by Mr Guy Maynard, Curator of Ipswich Museum. He was paid weekly and worked for long seasons on the agreed payment arrangement from 1935–1939, his principal task being the excavation of a Roman villa he had discovered at Stanton Chair, Suffolk. These excavations were laid open each year and temporary museums were set up on the site for visitors. Many well-known archaeologists, while still students, worked for Mr Brown on seasonal visits to the site.

In 1938 Basil Brown was by agreement released from his employment by Ipswich Museum for a season during which he was paid by Mrs Edith May Pretty to excavate three of the mounds on her estate at Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge. In these months he excavated three disturbed burials or cremation burials of the sixth or early seventh centuries which had been plundered of most of their contents. One had apparently contained a wooden ship held together with iron rivets, though their positions did not permit a reconstruction of the ship. It was soon realised that the site was either of Anglo-Saxon or Viking age, but that question was not decided either by Mr Brown or the Ipswich Museum authorities (who maintained supervision of his work) during the first season. At the end of this work, Mr Brown returned immediately to his work for the Museum, at Stanton Chair.