BROWN, Mary
As Mary Elizabeth Odam, she was born at Debenham in Suffolk on 29 November 1928, daughter of George Stanley Odam, and his wife Muriel Gladys née Tawell (3 November 1903-1964) who married at Debenham in 1926 and lived briefly in Islington before coming to Suffolk. Mary studied at Bath Academy of Art but suffering from severe tuberculosis spent time in the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital and some two years at home in Beccles before making a recovery. Mary then trained as a teacher at Trent Park Training College, in north London and she married at Beccles in 1954, Anthony Chares Brown (3 October 1926-22 September 1977) of Grove Road, Beccles and worked as Mary Brown. Mary and her husband moved to Swanton Morley, Norfolk where her husband had a smallholding and Mary began teaching at the local school. On her retirement she volunteered at the town's Bishop Bonner's Cottage Museum when a major project involved Mary in making pen-and-ink drawings of clothes and exhibits. The drawings went into the museum catalogue and although Mary was an excellent artist, she never exhibited her work, keeping her paintings private but she illustrated David Woodward's 'Larn Yarself Silly Suffolk: A Comprehensive Guide to the Suffolk Dialect' (1997). Mary Elizabeth Brown died at Swanton Morley, Norfolk on 25 February 2019.