Edward Browning


Edward Bailey Browning was an English architect working in Stamford.

Life

Edward Browning was the son of the Stamford architect Bryan Browning. He was apprenticed to the London architect George Maddox and by 1847 was in partnership with his father. The partnership continued until his father's death in 1856. Edward Browning qualified as an ARIBA on 22 March 1847. Their architectural practice was at No.16, Broad Street, Stamford. He held a number of ecclesiastical appointments as an architect and surveyor. These included the position of Architect and Surveyor for Dean and Chapter of Peterborough Cathedral for the Cathedral Precincts and surveyor of Ecclesiastical Dilapidations for the Archdeaconry of Oakham, which he resigned in 1882 due to ill health. Browning served as Mayor of Stamford in 1862-3 and gave the town its gold mayoral chain. He was after 1870 an auditor for the Midland Bank. The Stamford architect Joseph Boothroyd Corby was a pupil of Browning and the architectural practice was continued by J. C. Traylen.
Apart from the Marquess of Exeter at Burghley House, Edward Browning also worked extensively for a number of the leading aristocratic and landed families in Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire and elsewhere. He took over from his father Bryan Browning with work at Apethorpe Palace for the 12th Earl of Westmorland, and, apart from Apethorpe, designed estate housing, farms and other building at King's Cliffe. For the Marquis of Huntly he added a major extension to Orton Hall near Peterborough. For the Duke of Buccleuch, whose main residence was at Boughton House, he designed a large house at Millwood in Dalton in Furness, in Cumbria. In Essex he undertook a re-modelling of Barrington Hall in Essex for the Barrington/Loundes family. More extensive was his work for Lord Brownlow of Belton House and for other members of the Cust family, which included a number of schools and other buildings in the Grantham area.
Browning was married to Louisa Ann Fox on 12 September 1850 at St Michael's Church, Stamford, and they had 16 children. On retirement he moved to London and died on 14 April 1882.

Works

With his father, 1848–1856

  • Stamford Town Bridge, St Mary's Hill /St Martins. Rebuilt over the river Welland by Messrs Browning 1848
  • 3 St Mary's Hill. Stamford. 1848. Former Boat and Railway Hotel.
  • 4 St Mary's Hill, Stamford. Adjacent to the River Welland and rebuilt at the same time as the Town Bridge was built.
  • 5 St Mary's Hill. Former Conservative Club, Stamford. Adjacent to the River Welland.
  • Building on corner of Red Lion Square and High Street. 1848. Jacobean style.
  • Byard House. 19 St Paul's Street, Stamford. 1851. Two-storey ashlar house was built in 1851, on the site of a building dating to 1666. It has two full-height bay windows in a 17th-century style, with heavy corbelled gables in a 17th-century style. Now part of Stamford Endowed Schools.
  • Midland Bank, Corner of St Mary's Street and St Mary's Hill, Stamford 1848. Three storeys with shaped gables to the attic dormer windows.
  • 16 Broad Street, Stamford. The Browning's offices, possibly the work of Edward Browning, c.1855.

    By himself

Schools

  • Grantham National School 1858-9
  • Little Gonerby National School, Grantham.. Now Belvoir House Care Home. The Stamford Mercury recorded that school was opened on 17 June 1863 and the school had been built through "the munificence of the Hon. & Rev. Rd. Cust" with Edward Browning as architect and John Wilson builder, and "The building will have a stone exterior of very handsome appearance, and will form a very handsome architectural addition to the group of villa residences already built in the neighbourhood. The stone is from the quarries of Mr. Wilson, at Castor, Cambridgeshire".
  • Totternhoe Board School, Castle Hill Road, Totternhoe, Bedfordshire. 1867. Built for Marian Lady Alford in memory of her son, the late Lord Brownlow. T-shaped building with school and master's house. Arched windows with decorative brick over windows and banding. To accommodate 140 children. The school was let to Bedfordshire County Council in 1916 when the Lord Brownlow sold the Totternhoe Estate. The school was demolished after 1950.
  • Hough-on-the-Hill, Old Primary School. 1867. Grade II. School with schoolhouse attached to south. T-plan. Coursed ironstone rubble, ashlar dressings, banded fishscale slate roof. Roofs with iron ridge with small ventilators and three chimney stacks. The school runs to the north at right angles from schoolhouse with an ornate shaped gable and coped chimney. West front has plain sashed window to north, another ornate projection with ornate shaped gable with finial and a large three-mullioned rectangular window with small triangular opening above. Small buttress to south. Cross wing has small buttress and small rectangular window on north side with large ashlar dressed lateral stack with 2 tall chimneys. Pointed doorway to north end of west front of projection. Plaque above with a large 'B' for Brownlow inscribed on shield. Large coped gable on west side, with bell hood.
  • Stamford High School High Street St Martin's, Stamford, 1876. With gothic detailing to the first floor windows and the arched entrances, but otherwise with some surprisingly modern characteristics.

    School attributed to Edward Browning

  • New Road, Easton on the Hill Northamptonshire. 1867. Grade II Listing. Now village hall. c.1867. The adjacent master's house could also be by Browning. Single-storey T-shape school. Squared coursed limestone with ashlar dressings with a Collyweston slate roof. On road frontage are three stone mullion windows. Conical ventilator on roof ridge. Elevation to left has gable and with large three light window with plate tracery and cusped-heads Small square tower attached, with a square ashlar cupola, with spirelet, clock face on tower and chiming bell in cupola. The school was originally endowed by Richard Garford in 1670 and rebuilt on the present site in 1867, to include a National School for girls, as well as boys, at a cost of £1,200.

    Hospital and almshouses

  • Stamford Hospital, three fever wards designed with Dr William Newman.
  • Almshouses 90–100 Church Street, Market Deeping. Listed Grade II. Six almshouses were built in 1877 to designs by Edward Browning of Stamford. They were built following a bequest by Miss Mary Ann Scotney to provide for six Protestant widows or spinsters. Single storey with Collyweston slate roof and ashlar ridge chimney stacks. Squared limestone rubble with ashlar quoins and dressings. Three-sided courtyard plan facing road. Five-bay frontage, the end bays are advanced and separately gabled. In the porch roof is a small two-light dormer window. In the gable ends are similar single windows. The left hand gable has a plaque with "MAS" in raised lettering and the right hand gable the date "1877". Both plaques have draped garlands above.

    Public buildings

  • Corn Exchange, Broad Street, Stamford 1859 Tudor Gothic with a large first-floor window within a shallow projecting bay. Altered after a fire in 1925.
  • Buttermarket, Red Lion Square, Stamford 1861. Ashlar with a stone slate roof. Two storeys, Four windows with windows, Coat of arms below label. Small dentil cornice above the three bay round-headed arcade of the former Buttermarket. Moulded arches with keystone. Grade II listed.
  • Corn Exchange, Ware, Hertfordshire 1866.

    Churches

Bedfordshire
  • Bletsoe 1858. Restoration of church.
  • Dunton. 1861. The tower rebuilt, the south porch was partially rebuilt and the chancel restored.
  • Tempsford 1873. Restoration of church.
    Cambridgeshire
  • Stilton, 1857
  • Holme Church, Cambridgeshire. 1862. The outside of the church rebuilt, but earlier masonry in the interior of the church. Rockfaced with double bellcote. Decorative period tracery.
  • Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire. 1858. New roof over south aisle.
    Essex
  • St Giles, Langford, Essex. 1880–2. Romanesque church, largely re-built by Browning. New bell turret on the north side of the chancel and a new north aisle, vestry and porch.
    Hertfordshire
  • St Helen's Church, Wheathampstead, 1864
    Lincolnshire
  • St John the Baptist's Church, Stamford. 1856. Re-ordered the interior for Tractarian or High Church worship. Finely carved pews in the nave to Browning's designs.
  • St Martin Barholm 1856
  • Langtoft 1859
  • St Andrew's Church, Folkingham. In 1860 Edward Browning advertised for tenders from builders for "Taking Down and Re-building the Pillars and Clerestory of the nave of FOLKINGHAM CHURCH with a new nave roof together with other reparations."
  • St Peter's Church, Threekingham. 1860. Edward Browning undertook a thorough restoration of the church at the cost of about £500. This included cleaning the freestone of the nave, pillars, and arches. The windows of the south aisle were restored as well as the porch with a new opened timber roof. The ancient bench ends of the church were carefully reproduced in English oak as well as new prayer-desk with open tracery front and richly carved book-board, and a new lectern. A pulpit of polished alabaster, with a richly carved cornice of natural and conventional foliage provided.The pulpit is octagonal, with shafts of polished green marble at the intersections : the base and corbel are of Ketton stone, black marble shafts in the centre panel is carved a lamb and banner bearing the cross. The floor of the church was encaustic tiles with glazed bands arranged in a trellis, and square compartments. The recumbent figures of Lambert Trekingham and his wife were partially restored, and set on a plinth plain stone.
  • St Mary's Church, Stamford. 1860. Restoration of the chancel.
  • St Mary's, Sutterton. 1861–3. Extensively rebuilt, including tower and spire, but the overall earlier appearance of the medieval church has been retained.
  • St John the Baptist, Claydike Bank, Amber Hill, Lincolnshire. 1867. Red brick with polygonal apse, bellcote. Lancet windows. Decorative interior with yellow brick with red dado and black band and naturalistic foliage cut in red brick. The church was made redundant in February 1995 and was sold in April 1998 for conversion into a private home.
  • All Saints' Church, Fosdyke
  • St Andrew, Sempringham. 1868–9. Apsed chancel added and the north aisle wall extended to cover the area of the former transept.
  • All Saints' Church, Snelland 1862 for the Cust family.