BROWN, William

1779 - 1851

William Brown was born at Framlingham, Suffolk on 5 December 1779. An architect, surveyor and timber merchant, founder of the Ipswich timber firm of William Brown & Company. He practiced as an architect in Ipswich, often designing in the Greek Revival style. He married at St Lawrence church, Ipswich on 23 May 1810, Harriet Jermyn, one of the two surviving daughters of Ipswich printer & bookseller George Jermyn (1759-1799) and his grandson was Frank Brown. In 1813, William's designs for a new Town Hall at Ipswich were adjudged the best of the three designs under consideration and he designed the Norfolk Lunatic Asylum, Thorpe next Norwich 1811-1814. In 1806, he exhibited at Norwich Society of Artists from Ipswich 'Ground plan for a design for a Corn-Exchange, proposed to be built on Castle-Meadow [Norwich]' and other designs for this building. In 1841, William Brown was a 60-year-old inmate of Belle Vue Asylum, St Helens, Ipswich, where he died in 1851, aged 72, and buried at St Nicholas Church, Ipswich on 12 June 1851.