Charles Henry Lewton Brain, 1890 to 1978. (© D. Lewton Brain.)
C.H. Lewton Brain only took up archaeology after his retirement in 1947, when he left the City of London and returned his wife’s native village of Heacham. His chance finding of part of a saddle quern in 1948 led him to meet Ivan Thatcher of Snettisham, a keen amateur archaeologist, with whom he visited sites, conducted small excavations and studied finds. He also joined the Norfolk Research Committee, where he worked alongside and befriended the then Curator of the Norwich Castle Museum, Rainbird Clarke.
C.H. Lewton Brain contributed a considerable number of finds and notes regarding new sites of interest to both the Norwich and King's Lynn museums. In 1950 at the request of Captain Fellowes, the Queen’s agent for the Sandringham estate, he took over as curator of the small museum housed in the park at Sandringham. As a result of this he produced The Sandringham Estate and its Archaeology (1951). His other publications included a booklet entitled The Archaeology of Heacham and the Adjoining Areas (1967) in which he listed site and archaeological objects found along the course of the River Heacham - fifty one of which he claimed to have discovered himself!
Diana Lewton Brain