Sarah Catherine Lucy Brown (more commonly known to friends as Catherine) was born on 13th December 1885.
She would go on to lend her name to one of Oxford’s best known and loved institutions, Brown’s Café in the Covered Market.
Today, if you go there, the legend lives on with bright new décor and window engravings that say, ‘Est. 1924.’
This same year also marks 250 years of the Covered Market itself, making it a unique feature in Oxford and unusual more generally, the vast majority of markets being temporary, open-air affairs.
The tiny fly in the ointment is that it would now appear that the café was founded not in 1924 but in 1920, a couple of years after the cessation of conflict in World War One and just as the inflationary spike that followed it was beginning to subside.
Catherine was one of ten children, two having died in infancy. Her family had moved to Oxford from London and were living at 20 Albert Street, Jericho.
Her father Charles Henry Brown was a saddler and harness maker who, once established moved his business into a premises in Market Buildings, Market Street where it remained until his son Frank, also a saddler sold up and the business moved into the Covered Market, specialising in dog leads, and general leather goods.
Little is known about the early years but it is assumed that Catherine Brown attended St Barnabas Girls School until leaving at the age of 12 to become a dressmaker’s apprentice.
The 1901 Census shows her, aged 16, working as a dressmaker and living with her family at 13 St Aldates, Oxford.
At another point she worked as a maid in Brighton for an extremely wealthy widow of a coal industrialist.
Catherine was one of ten children, two having died in infancy. Her family had moved to Oxford from London and were living at 20 Albert Street, Jericho.
Her father Charles Henry Brown was a saddler and harness maker who, once established moved his business into a premises in Market Buildings, Market Street where it remained until his son Frank, also a saddler sold up and the business moved into the Covered Market, specialising in dog leads, and general leather goods.
It was then in 1920 at the age of 35 that she opened her café in the Covered Market at numbers 92 and 128. It is important to note that this was her business as opposed to a family business, notes Sarah.
There were already two family-run cafes in the market, George’s at 15-16 and Hunt’s at 5-6. At the time, there were few eating establishments in Oxford that served home cooked favourites for a more modest budget, an important clue concerning the subsequent longevity and popularity of the café for students on a budget.
Devonshire Clotted Cream was delivered daily and luncheons and market dinners were a specialty. In a trade advertisement, she described her café thus, ‘Clean, comfortable and especially convenient for business people.’
Over the next ten years Miss Brown grew her business, expanding into 129 and 129a. Brown’s became a fixture in the Covered Market.
She took part in Trade Exhibitions with a mock-up cottage stand complete with a mechanical bird in a cage and a display of fruit salad, jelly and Devonshire Clotted Cream. She was variously known as ‘stately’, ‘one of Oxford’s most celebrated characters’, and more affectionately, ‘Ma Brown.’