A talk titled ‘William Brown’s Panorama and the Journalistic Imagination’ was given by Richard Lance Keeble, at St Martin’s, Withcall, on 26 June 2025 to raise money for church funds. There follows a summary of the talk:
While I was a full-time journalism teacher at the University of Lincoln from 2003 to 2013 I wrote a regular column in the monthly newsletter sent out to academics. In one issue, in 2011, I focused on William Brown’s Panorama which I would see in a room at Louth Town Hall every week as I attended rehearsals for Louth Male Voice Choir. I called it (with a certain journalistic flourish) one of the Wonders of the World. Brown was throughout his life a poor working class man – and as well as being a brilliant painter, was a journalist for 20 years for the Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury. It is the country’s oldest provincial newspaper and, at Brown’s time, commanded a circulation of around 12,000 making it the leading journal in the East Midlands. He also reported for the Hull Pioneer. Some years ago, in the early years of the internet there was a lot of talk (which turned out to be rather fanciful) about a new kind of journalist, the citizen journalist, who would gradually take media power away from the professionals. But citizen journalism was nothing new. Brown was a perfect example of a mid 19th century citizen journalist, working mainly as a housepainter but freelancing for his local papers – basically as a means to earn money and survive.
After I started volunteering at Louth Museum a couple of years ago I came into regular contact with the reproduction of the Panorama and my fascination with it grew. I was lucky to volunteer every Thursday morning alongside Richard Gurnham who, as the outstanding local historian, knows probably the history of every brick in the town. So I learned more and more about the Panorama. I must thank Richard for sharing his vast knowledge – and for his beautifully written books on the history of the town, in particular his People of the Panorama.
Brown as a working class journo-painter particularly attracts me. I have spent quite some time pondering the notion of the journalistic imagination and have written a lot of chapters and edited a number of texts on this very subject. As I considered Brown’s masterpiece it occurred to me that it was a wonderful manifestation of the journalistic imagination.
So in the course of my talk I’ll highlight journalists’ stress on narrative story-telling. I’ll point out the importance of the elements of up-to-date, the here and now in journalism. I’ll talk about immersion journalism, campaigning journalism – and the emphasis on precise detail and accuracy in good journalism. And I’ll show how all of these attitudes are reflected in Brown’s masterpiece.
Creative Commons: Detail from the Panorama showing the Priory, Eastgate
Brown: The Man
Born in Malton, Yorkshire, in 1788, Brown lives in Hull and Grimsby and marries his first wife, Elizabeth Holland when he is 20 and she just 14. In 1818 the family move to Louth probably into a rented house in Aswell Street, next to the Turk’s Head. He works as a house painter but the Browns are poor so they move from one rented property to another: over the years in Bridge Street, the Fish Shambles and Eastgate. Elizabeth dies in April 1833 having had 13 confinements in 20 years but leaving just five children. Brown, aged 45, quickly marries Letitia Hales of Louth, a widow of 54 who brings with her two teenage daughters. In 1837, they rent a small property in Vickers Lane and they are to remain there for the next 17 years.
Entirely self-taught, he begins painting around 1830 when he is 42 and concentrates on drawing chapels and religious themes such as the Pilgrim’s Progress.
The Painting of the Panorama
Early in 1844 the spire of St James’ Church is hit by lightning. The contract for the repair job goes to 23-year-old builder John Dales and work begins on 8 July with the erection of wooden scaffolding.
It’s impossible to know how many times Brown climbed up and down the scaffolding bravely carrying his sketching equipment in a satchel over his shoulder. Did he carry a telescope? He must have done in order to be able to paint distant features so accurately. Moreover it’s hard to know what inspired him. Robert Barker, an Irish-born artist working in Edinburgh is credited with having created the first panorama in 1785. In 1829 a panorama, the brainchild of Thomas Hornor, is constructed in Regent’s Park, London. In 1842 Herbert Ingram, from Boston, launches the Illustrated London News and its first issue on 14 May promises subscribers a wood-engraved panoramic view of London. Brown may have seen this. It perhaps inspired him. But we don’t know.
But we do know that he makes seven sketches (reproductions of them can be viewed in Louth Museum) of the town, the surrounding countryside and in the distance the sea. And over three years in an extraordinary labour of love he devotes his life in his little house in Vickers Lane (packed with children) to completing the Panorama in two big panels – each 9 feet by 6 feet tall.
Finally it is exhibited to the public in July and August 1847 in the Mansion House (the mid-18th century Assembly Rooms then owned by the Borough Council). A few weeks later Brown’s second wife, Letitia, dies aged 68. He is 59. In the following July 1848 he marries his third wife 41-year-old Ann Donner of Alford, in Louth Wesleyan Chapel.
Creative Commons: Reproduction of Panorama at Louth Museum
Journalists are concerned with the here and now, they are eye-witnesses to contemporary events. When in the early 1850s a number of important new buildings appear in Louth, Brown is keen to alter his Panorama to reflect these changes. So in 1854 the Corn Exchange replaces the Guildhall in the Cornmarket, the Town Hall as we have seen is built on Cannon Street –the ground for the public cemetery which Brown has campaigned for so fervently in his journalism, at Julian Bower is cleared – and the houses on George Street are constructed. All of these feature in the Panorama which Brown exhibits at the Corn Exchange from 29-31 May 1856. It is not seen again in public for 92 years.
The Discovery of the Panorama: Quite by Chance
Brown dies on 11 February 1859 aged 70. A tumour weighing an extraordinary 14 pounds is found on his chest. As a housepainter he suffered from the constant exposure to the white lead pigment in the paints he used. Thereafter for almost a century Brown is totally forgotten. And what precisely happens to the Panorama is something of a mystery. It is known that in 1895 the vicar of Sutton on Sea and Markby sees the paintings described as ‘maps’ in a catalogue of an auctioneer’s furniture sale at Sutton on Sea. Little interest is shown in them and he buys them for five shillings. The equivalent of £21 today.
The Panorama next turns up in 1948 when Louth Mayor Wilfred Alex Slack meets Mrs Whithead, the wife of the vicar of Alford. who says she has two pictures he ought to see. They belong to her brother Commander FA Smyth who lived in Devon and she was storing them for him in a cottage in Markby. They go to see the pictures and the Panorama (in a very poor condition, badly torn at the edges with serious cracks in the paint in some places) is finally discovered. The total cost of purchase, restoring, framing and glazing is £350. In 1949 the paintings are handed over to the borough council and they are hung in the Town Hall until the council moves in 2012 to the Sessions House on Eastgate where they can now be viewed on appointment. A wonderful eye-level and back-lit reproduction (12 feet by 4 feet) is housed at Louth Museum.
When I was volunteering at the museum it occurred to me that there was no memorial to Brown in the town. A blue plaque has long been put up on the elegant house in Gospelgate where the eminent woodcarver Thomas Wilkinson Wallis lived from 1851-1903 and there is a substantial gravestone to him in the London Road cemetery. Wallis became wealthy following commissions from the local gentry and according to David Robinson had ‘made good, so joining the aspiring middle class’.
Brown in contrast was a spire climber, he remained distinctly working class throughout his life and may have been a difficult man to get on with. Robinson says he represented the ‘low church, dissenting, artisan tradition’. Tragically, he was buried in a pauper’s grave and his plot has now been grassed over. So Richard Gurnham and I set about having a Blue Plaque erected to Brown on Vickers Lane on the site where he painted the Panorama (his rented house having been demolished in the 1970s to make way for a block of flats opposite the Post Office). One of the last official acts of the wonderful ebullient Julia Simmons as Louth Mayor before she sadly died just before Christmas 2024 was to unveil the plaque, largely funded by Louth Civic Trust.
So in various ways the memory of William Brown the creator of the Panorama, one of the wonders of the world, is rightly being preserved.
- For a view of the Panorama see https://www.louthtowncouncil.gov.uk/browns-panorama/.