Elizabeth Alyssum Brayne was born in the UK in 1922 but from the age of two grew up primarily in Kenya. Her father, William Frederick Brayne, was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Medical Service, based at Kaisugu, Kericho, Kenya, where they also owned a tea estate. She married to William Denny and is recorded as working for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, based initially at the Loreto Convent, Msongari, Nairobi, then at Mombasa Island and finally Moshi, Tanzania (c1946). By this time, she had separated and was living with Lieutenant Colonel Desmond Otho Fitzgerald, of the Royal Engineers, whilst working as the Telephone Exchange Supervisor for the East Africa Command, Nairobi (c1947). In November 1948 Elizabeth took a Union Castle Line ship, via Cape Town, to the UK, where she married Fitzgerald the following month. Elizabeth studied architecture, initially via a correspondence course, augmented by part-time study at Southend Municipal College, before entering the Architectural Association ‘Second Year’, as a ‘mature student’, in 1951. As part of her final year’s studies in 1954/55, she joined the first cohort of the newly formed AA Department of Tropical Architecture and enrolled in a course to learn the Kikuyu language at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies, London. In October 1955, Elizabeth and her husband returned to Nairobi, Elizabeth to practice as an architect and Desmond to join Peter M Amscotts & Partners as an engineer. Little is known of Elizabeth’s subsequent career – she is recorded as practicing in Nairobi in 1956 and subsequently in Perth, Australia, following her divorce in 1964. She appears to have lived in Perth until her death in 2022, one month and a day over the age of a hundred. 

Sources: 

• Architectural Association Student Register 1945-1972, AA Archives
• Department of Tropical Architecture, student listing, Otto Koenigsberger Collection, Box OK27, AA Archives
• Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005, General Register Office; United Kingdom: Volume 5c, p2387
• Fitzgerald, Desmond, Many Parts: The Life and Travels of a Soldier, Engineer and Arbitrator in Africa and Beyond. I.B. Tauris, 2006
• Kenya Gazette, 11th September, 1956, p.27
• Royal Institute of British Architects, The Kalendar of the Royal Institute of British Architects. RIBA, 1965, p98
• Royal Institute of British Architects, Directory of RIBA Members, 1996. RIBA, 1996, pM-140