Sutton Hoo hero – portrayed on screen by Ralph Fiennes - lived 89 years in the same Suffolk village. We visit the place he called home.

“Hope you have good finds today,” wrote May Brown to her husband Basil. “It would be nice to come across something really good and uncommon.”

Little did she know it, but self-taught archaeologist Basil Brown was about to make history. On that day in May 1939 he was on the brink of unearthing one of the greatest discoveries ever made in the UK.

A few days before, he had cycled away from their cottage and pedalled off down the village street to begin his second spell of excavations at Sutton Hoo.

May was replying to a letter that began “I have no real news”. But as he dug deeper - with meticulous care - into a huge mound he suspected contained an important burial the true significance began to come clear.

Under the earth lay the ghostly outline of an enormous ship … the last resting place of an Anglo Saxon king. Later excavations led by Cambridge academics would reveal the iconic Sutton Hoo treasure.

The story has been told in many ways - recently in the film The Dig which was based on a novel of the same name and includes fictional characters and events.

But in a new book produced for the local history group in Rickinghall, where Basil Brown lived most of his 89 years, we hear a different voice … Basil himself.

It reveals, from a uniquely personal point of view, the extraordinary life’s work of a man whose ability to identify historic sites made him an archaeological legend.

Author Sarah Doig lives in part of the former school where Basil began his education … her kitchen was his infants’ classroom. She has trawled painstakingly through his handwritten diaries, letters and records - and the memories of those who knew him - to tell his story.

Her book, The Real Basil Brown, was written on behalf of Quatrefoil which researches the history of the Rickinghalls (Inferior and Superior), Botesdale and Redgrave.

It is subtitled ‘From Rickinghall to Sutton Hoo and back’, because there was far more to Basil than his world-famous discovery.

Even before his first digs at Sutton Hoo in 1938 he was already the area’s “go to man” for archaeology and history, says Sarah. Even today, she found, local archaeologists say that wherever they go, Basil got there first. He continued to be a local hero thought of with pride and affection for the rest of his life.

Sarah says the book could not have been written without fellow Quatrefoil members Jean Sheehan and Di Maywhort who have spent years collecting information about Basil and in 2007 organised an exhibition about him in St Mary’s Church. They invited visitors to write down their memories, which were a prime source of anecdotes and tributes.

Basil was famous for cycling everywhere. He never owned a car, even setting off to travel the 30-plus miles to Sutton Hoo on his bike … although some wonder if at times he went to Mellis station and did the rest of the trip by train.

“I can’t disassociate Basil from his bike,” wrote one exhibition visitor. “It was almost part of his anatomy and I never knew a man who could cycle so slowly without falling off.”

Actor Ralph Fiennes, who went to great lengths to research his role as Basil in The Dig, went to Rickinghall and had lunch with Di and Jean before cycling all the way to Sutton Hoo.

Basil did, though, make the occasional exception by catching the bus to Bury. Where today’s archaeologists would use drones, Jean was told he travelled upstairs on the double decker for a better view of the changes in soil and crop colour caused by underlying remains.

Another who knew him in later life recalled his “crumpled tweed jacket, flat cap, small round glasses, and false teeth that clattered as they tried to keep up with his animated jaw”.

Visitors to the Browns’ home remembered parts of it were like a fascinating museum, and that books overflowing from his many bookcases were piled on the floor - much to May’s disgust.

In the garden his sheds - containing treasures such as four skulls he believed were Roman - were described as “a sight to behold, made of old pieces of wood and tin. If a piece fell off he just nailed on another patch.”

“That's what makes this book unique from any other that has been written about Basil … real memories from people who knew him,” said Sarah.

Peter Christie became close to Basil growing up in Rickinghall, and stayed in touch when he moved away. After Basil died May gave him many personal items like photos which he shared for the book.

Their friendship inspired Peter to become a local historian who has written dozens of books about the area where he now lives in the West Country.

“Above all else Basil is remembered for his constant willingness to make time for children and enthuse them about archaeology,” says Sarah.

“Working away quietly he was a huge inspiration to a whole new generation. Wherever he was digging he made sure he always had children working alongside him.”

He was also a guiding light for archaeologists like Stanley West who led the excavation and eventual reconstruction of the Anglo Saxon village at West Stow.

A school project about Basil written in the late 1960s by Martin Chilvers was also an unique source. “He went through it with him and lent him his notebooks,” said Sarah. “Some of the things we wouldn’t have known otherwise about Basil’s early life came from that.

Basil - who left school at 13 but was driven by a passion for learning - looked to the stars as well as the soil, and wrote a book on astronomy in 1932.

He told Martin his fascination began at the age of five. “He would often dig and dig, and see what he could find, and when it got too dark he would watch the stars,” wrote the then Culford schoolboy.

Today a wander down The Street in Rickinghall is full of reminders of Basil including the farmhouse where he spent some of his early life, and later succeeded his father as tenant farmer.

Further along is the terraced cottage called Cambria which was home to him and May, where Quatrefoil recently attached a blue plaque … and where in a subtle tribute the door knocker is shaped like a tiny spade.

Outside the door of St Mary’s Church is an ancient stone container he unearthed nearby, possibly a font or a water tank, and now filled with plants.

Then local resident Frank Gelder walks by, turns to the dog at his heels and calls out “come on Basil”. Just a coincidence, the tiny rescue Shi Tzu is not named after the archaeologist, but it feels like serendipity.

The Brown family came to Rickinghall when Basil was a few months old. His father worked at Church Farm and later took over the tenancy. It was a precarious living and Basil began working on the farm the day after he left school.

He was judged medically unfit to serve in the First World War - no reason was given - but towards the end of the war enrolled in the Medical Corps as a volunteer.

May and Basil met in Cromer, and began married life at Church Farm. In 1935 he left farming and embarked on a career as an archaeologist.

He was already recording all his digs and finds in meticulous detail, in spidery handwriting illustrated with drawings, sometimes in notebooks that were clearly secondhand.

A meeting with Guy Maynard, curator of Ipswich Museum, led to him being employed as an archaeological excavator.

The Romans were an early obsession and among sites he excavated over time were numerous pottery kilns and a villa at Stanton Chare Farm.

In 1938 came the job that would propel him into the history books - although for some years his vital role was barely mentioned. He was employed by Edith Pretty, owner of Sutton Hoo, to investigate a series of mounds on her estate.

Basil is described by people who knew him as unassuming, gentle and friendly. But he was ready to stand up for himself when he knew he was right.

He walked away from the early excavations “rather than be dictated to” because of the sceptical attitude of the Ipswich Museum president.

In 1939 he was invited to return. A letter to May tells of the moment he realised the momentous nature of his find.

“I have found the other end of the ship. About 84 feet from one end to the other - it must have been the ship of a king or person of very great importance for one of the largest warships of the time to be used.”

But once the archaeological establishment took over Basil was sidelined. It must have hurt.

Gilbert Burroughs, who got to know him in the 1950s, recalled he spoke about it on rare occasions. “He didn’t moan but I think it did cut very, very deep,” he said.

May and Basil were a devoted couple, and it was she - fiercely proud of his achievements - more than he who would speak out about the injustice.

Gradually his role began to be recognised. At Cambria a framed invitation to a Royal garden party hung on the wall, and he was awarded a Civil List pension for services to archaeology.

Now he is given full credit for his crucial part in the Sutton Hoo story.

During the war Basil worked for the NAAFI, and was also a special constable and a member of the ROC which had an observation post on Botesdale common.

He then worked for a time as a boiler stoker at Culford School before being re-employed by Ipswich Museum until retiring aged 73.

But he still carried on digging. “He just wanted answers to everything, and didn’t like things he couldn’t solve,” said Sarah, who also had enthusiastic support from Suffolk County Council Archeological Service, and Suffolk Archives which store many of Basil’s documents.

“He definitely had a knack and innate ability - there was intuition but not without a lot of hard work involved.”

Basil died in 1977. May, who lived until the mid-1980s, told Peter Christie she would have liked him to be buried in the churchyard at Rickinghall Superior where his parents were laid to rest, but it had been closed to new burials.

“It was a very sad letter,” said Sarah. “I cried when I read it, and I cried when I wrote about it.”

Basil was cremated at Ipswich and his ashes scattered at the town’s New Cemetery. An entry in the Book of Remembrance reads simply: “Brown, Basil John Wait. Died 1977. Remembered with gratitude.”

The Real Basil Brown is available online at quatrefoil.org.uk,