The history of Norwich's Sir Thomas Browne and his statue

There was a time when his house and garden in the heart of the City of Norwich was described as being a “paradise.”

That is all gone but the memory of Sir Thomas Browne lives on thanks to the statue on Hay Hill which was unveiled amid much ceremony in 1905…300 years following his birth.

The unveiling of the statue of Sir Thomas Browne on Hay Hill, Norwich, in 1905 by Lord Avebury, formerly Sir John Lubbock (Image: Newsquest Archive)

Since then the area has changed time and time again. Today it is undergoing more renovations and Sir Thomas has been taken down while the work is carried out.

This physician, philosopher and writer has been described as the greatest scholar and most original thinker to have made Norwich his home.

But…he also believed in witchcraft and after he was summoned to give testimony at a trial in Bury Edmunds during 1664, two women were hanged.

The cover of Anthony Batty Shaw’s 1982 book on Sir Thomas Browne featuring the Mancroft portrait by an unknown artist (Image: Newsquest Archive)

In a book written some 40 years ago, Anthony (Tony) Batty Shaw, a senior physician at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital and medical historian wrote: “His enduring claims to fame rest on his reputation as one of the great writers of English prose, as a moralist and as a student of the philosophy of the 17th century in which he lived.

“Familiar with six languages, a naturalist, and antiquarian of distinction, Browne was the leading Norwich physician of his day and in his first and most celebrated work Religio Medici wrote on his own religious faith and its relation to his profession,” said Anthony.

A night-time scene when Browne was sitting beside the water (Image: Newsquest Archive)

Browne was born in London in 1605. He went to Westminster College, then Oxford and finished his medical studies abroad at Montpellier, Padua and Leiden.

When he was 31 he arrived in Norwich where he was to stay for the remaining 46 years of his life.

Hay Hill in the early 1900s (Image: Mike Adcock Collection/Norwich Heritage Projects)

Norwich would have had its attractions for a young man intending to establish a practice as a physician for it was still the largest city of the realm after London.

But, as Anthony explains, his main encouragement to settle in Norwich came from his former Oxford tutor, the Rev Thomas Lushington who had moved to the city in 1635 as Chaplain to Bishop Richard Corbett.

Snowing again! George Plunkett took this photograph in 1938 (Image: George Plunkett)

Five years after moving to Norwich he married Dorothy Mileham of North Burlingham. ”They lived at a grand  house in the Haymarket where he also worked and on a visit in 1671 John Evelyn wrote: “His whole house and garden being a paradise and cabinet of rarities, and that of the best collection, especially medals, books, plants and natural things.”

His garden was partly on the site occupied by Primark today. When the former Littlewood’s store was built in the 1960s an Elizabethan house, long known as Sir Thomas Browne’s Garden House was demolished.

One world famous building remains – the “people’s cathedral” – the Church of St Peter Mancroft where Browne worshipped and is buried.

Hay Hill and the Church of St Peter Mancroft during the early 1900s (Image: Mike Adcock Collection/Norwich Heritage Projects)

When he moved to the parish in 1650, from Tombland, the church would have lacked the beauty and serenity of today. Cromwell’s troops had destroyed its vestments, furnishings, ornaments and pictures.

We can follow Browne around Norfolk and Suffolk thanks to Anthony’s book so let’s take a look.

Blickling: Browne described a thunderstorm in 1665 when a “fire ball went of in Sr John Hobarts gallerie: hee was so neere that his arme & thigh were nummed above an hower after.”

Brampton: In 1667 he wrote about Roman urns found in a large arable field lying between Buxton and Brampton.

Bungay: In a thunderstorm in 1664 “a woeman & horse were killed: her hatt so shivered that no peece remained bigger than a groat whereof I had some eeces sent unto mee.”

A wonderful George Plunkett picture taken in 1937 when an escaped cow came calling at Hay Hill (Image: George Plunkett)

 Cromer: In 1665 during the Second Dutch War wrote that “wee heare also that a caper of twentie gunners was taken not farre from Cromer last Saturday by a frigat after 2 howers sight.”

Great Yarmouth: “Such store is sometimes taken in a day that ….that is, above a herring for every man in England.”

Preparing for war by building a brick air raid shelter on Hay Hill in 1939 (Image: George Plunkett)

In 1671 Browne was knighted by King Charles II in the Norwich Blackfriars (St Andrew’s Hall).

He died at his home in 1682 and buried at St Peter Mancroft. His coffin was accidently disturbed in 1840. His skull was presented to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital Museum five years later where it remained until 1922 when it was returned to the church.