Brown House on Old Maid’s Lane is named for Esther Louise Brown, who owned and lived in the house in the 1930s, but it could just as easily have honoured Roger Browne, who dwelled in a timberframed house on the lot in the late 17th century. The land was granted to his unmarried granddaughter Mary in 1717. Sometime in the 1770s, the Campbell family acquired the property. The house which stands today was probably erected by Samuel Campbell, who in 1783 left it to his wife Jane. The passage, hall, chamber and cellars were split between their children, Samuel and Mary Ann, after Jane’s death. In 1820 the house passed to Samuel’s daughter Jane, the wife of Andrew Cochram Hayward.

In the 1840s rooms were added to the eastern side of the original rectangular core, turning it into an L-shaped building. The addition replaced an earlier detached kitchen but the builders incorporated the old kitchen’s chimney into the newer structure, still visible on the exterior of the east wall. A small buttery, an architectural feature rare in St George’s, lies to the east of the addition.