Great Brownings is situated in part of a large area of land in South East London that has been maintained for over 400 years by the Dulwich Estate. In the 1950s the estate ran into difficulty. The area had been badly damaged during the Second World War, and lease lengths were running so short that banks were no longer happy to lend on the houses and selling was becoming more and more difficult. People were leaving the area and renting their houses out.

In 1954, Austin Vernon & Partners were called on to design a scheme that would rejuvenate the Dulwich Estate. Vernon himself had formerly been a pupil at Dulwich College from 1898 -1901 and so knew the area well, whilst his uncle Frederick Austin Vernon (1882-1972) had already been the surveyor and architect to the Dulwich Estate.

By 1957 Vernon’s first scheme of building was completed. The houses on Great Brownings followed a little later in 1966, forming part of a series of naturalistic schemes designed to integrate with the steep sloping sites in Dulwich Woods include Peckarmans Wood. The Great Brownings houses are all timber framed because the steep slope prevented easy access for normal heavy building materials. Over the next 20 years more than 2,000 new homes were designed by Austin Vernon & Partners resulting in a remarkable area of 1950s and 60s-era architecture.