Bruce Castle
Bruce Castle is a Grade I listed 16th-century manor house in Lordship Lane, Tottenham, London. It is named after the House of Bruce who formerly owned the land on which it is built. Believed to stand on the site of an earlier building, about which little is known, the current house is one of the oldest surviving English brick houses. It was remodelled in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
The house has been home to Sir William Compton, the Barons Coleraine and Sir Rowland Hill, among others. After serving as a school during the 19th century, when a large extension was built to the west, it was converted into a museum exploring the history of the areas now constituting London Borough of Haringey and, on the strength of its connection with Sir Rowland Hill, the history of the Royal Mail. The building also houses the archives of the London Borough of Haringey. Since 1892 the grounds have been a public park, Tottenham's oldest.
Origins of the name
The name Bruce Castle is derived from the House of Bruce, who had historically owned a third of the manor of Tottenham. However, there was no castle in the area, and it is unlikely that the family lived nearby. Upon his accession to the Scottish throne in 1306, Robert I of Scotland forfeited his lands in England, including the Bruce holdings in Tottenham, ending the connection between the Bruce family and the area. The former Bruce land in Tottenham was granted to Richard Spigurnell and Thomas Hethe.The three parts of the manor of Tottenham were united in the early 15th century under the Gedeney family and have remained united since. In all early records, the building is referred to as the Lordship House. The name Bruce Castle first appears to have been adopted by Henry Hare, 2nd Baron Coleraine, although Daniel Lysons speculates in The Environs of London that the use of this name dates to the late 13th century.
Architecture
A detached, cylindrical Tudor tower stands immediately to the south-west of the house, and is generally considered to be the earliest part of the building; however, Lysons believes it to have been a later addition. The tower is built of local red brick, and is tall, with walls thick. In 2006, excavations revealed that it continues for some distance below the current ground level. It was described in 1829 as being over a deep well, and being used as a dairy.Sources disagree on the house's initial construction date, and no records survive of its construction. There is some archaeological evidence dating parts of the building to the 15th century; William Robinson's History and Antiquities of the Parish of Tottenham suggests a date of about 1514, although the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments attributes it to the late 16th century. Nikolaus Pevsner speculates the front may have formed part of a courtyard house of which the remainder has disappeared.
The front of the mansion has been substantially remodelled. The house is made of red brick with ashlar quoining and the principal façade, terminated by symmetrical matching bays, has tall paned windows. The house and detached tower are among the earliest uses of brick as the principal building material for an English house.
Henry Hare, 2nd Baron Coleraine oversaw a substantial remodelling of the house in 1684, and much of the existing south façade dates from that time. The end bays were heightened, and the central porch was rebuilt with stone quoins and pilasters, a balustraded top, a small tower and cupola. A plan from 1684 shows the hall in the house's centre, with service rooms to the west and the main parlour to the east. On the first floor, the dining room was over the hall, the main bedchamber over the kitchen, and a lady's chamber over the porch.
In the early 18th century Henry Hare, 3rd Baron Coleraine oversaw a remodelling of the north of the house, that added a range of rooms to the north and the Coleraine coat of arms to the pediment of the north façade. In the late 18th century, under the ownership of James Townsend, the narrow east façade of the house was remodelled into an entrance front, and given the appearance of a typical Georgian house. At the same time, the south front's gabled attics were removed, giving the house's southern elevation its current appearance. An inventory of the house made in 1789 in preparation for its sale listed a hall, saloon, drawing room, dining room and breakfast parlour on the ground floor, with a library and billiard room on the first floor.
In the early 19th century, the house's west wing was demolished, leaving it with the asymmetrical appearance it retains today. The house was converted into a school, and in 1870 a three-story extension was built in the Gothic Revival style to the northwest of the house.
The 2006 excavations by the Museum of London uncovered the chalk foundations of an earlier building on the site, of which nothing is known. Court rolls of 1742 refer to the repair of a drawbridge, implying that the building then had a moat. A 1911 archaeological journal made passing reference to "the recent levelling of the moat".
Early residents
It is generally believed the house's first owner was Sir William Compton, Groom of the Stool to Henry VIII and one of the period's prominent courtiers, who acquired the manor of Tottenham in 1514. However, there is no evidence of Compton's living in the house, and there is some evidence the building dates to a later period.The earliest known reference to the building dates from 1516, when Henry VIII met his sister Margaret, Queen of Scots, at "Maister Compton's House beside Tottenham". The Comptons owned the building throughout the 16th century, but few records of the family or the building survive.
In the early 17th century, Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset and Lady Anne Clifford owned the house. Sackville ran up high debts through gambling and extravagant spending; he leased what was then still known as "The Lordship House" to Thomas Peniston, whose wife, Martha, daughter of Sir Thomas Temple, was said to be his mistress. The house was later sold to wealthy Norfolk landowner Hugh Hare.
17th century: the Hare family
Hugh Hare, 1st Baron Coleraine
Hugh Hare had inherited a large amount of money from his great-uncle Sir Nicholas Hare, Master of the Rolls. On the death of his father, his mother had remarried Henry Montagu, 1st Earl of Manchester, allowing the young Hugh Hare to rise rapidly in Court and social circles. He married Montagu's daughter by his first marriage and purchased the manor of Tottenham, including the Lordship House, in 1625, and was ennobled as Baron Coleraine shortly thereafter.As he was closely associated with the court of Charles I, Hare's fortunes went into decline during the English Civil War. His castle at Longford and his house in Totteridge were seized by Parliamentary forces, and returned upon the Restoration in a severe state of disrepair. Records of Tottenham from the period are now lost, and the ownership and condition of the Lordship House during the Commonwealth of England are unknown. Hugh Hare died at his home in Totteridge in 1667, having choked to death on a bone eating turkey while laughing and drinking, and was succeeded by his son Henry Hare, 2nd Baron Coleraine.
Henry Hare, 2nd Baron Coleraine
Henry Hare settled at the Lordship House, renaming it Bruce Castle in honour of the area's historic connection with the House of Bruce. Hare was a noted historian and author of the first history of Tottenham. He grew up at the Hare family house at Totteridge, and it is not known when he moved to Tottenham. At the time of the birth of his first child, Hugh, in 1668, the family were still living in Totteridge, while by the time of the death of his first wife Constantia, in 1680, the family were living in Bruce Castle. According to Hare, Constantia was buried in All Hallows Church in Tottenham. However, the parish register for the period is complete and makes no mention of her death or burial.Following the death of Constantia, Hare married Sarah Alston. They had been engaged in 1661, but she had instead married John Seymour, 4th Duke of Somerset. There is evidence that during Sarah's marriage to Seymour and Hare's marriage to Constantia, a close relationship was sustained between them.
The house was substantially remodelled in 1684, following Henry Hare's marriage to the dowager Duchess of Somerset, and much of the existing south façade dates from this time. The façade's central tower with a belvedere is a motif of the English Renaissance of the late 16th/early 17th centuries. Hatfield House, also close to London, had a similar central tower constructed in 1611, as does Blickling Hall in Norfolk, built circa 1616.
The Ghostly Lady of Bruce Castle
Although sources such as Pegram speculate that Constantia committed suicide in the face of a continued relationship between Hare and the Duchess of Somerset, little is known about her life and the circumstances of her early death, and her ghost reputedly haunts the castle.The earliest recorded reference to the ghost appeared in 1858—almost two hundred years after her death—in the Tottenham & Edmonton Advertiser.
The legend has now been largely forgotten, and there have been no reported sightings of the ghost in recent times.
Residents in the 18th century
Sarah Hare died in 1692 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, and Hare in 1708, to be succeeded by his grandson Henry Hare, 3rd Baron Coleraine. Henry Hare was a leading antiquary, residing only briefly at Bruce Castle between lengthy tours of Europe.The house was remodelled again under the 3rd Baron Coleraine's ownership. An extra range of rooms was added to the north, and the pediment of the north front ornamented with a large coat of the Coleraine arms.
Hare's marriage was not consummated. His only child was born to a French woman, Rosa du Plessis; Henrietta Rosa Peregrina was born in France in 1745. Hare died in 1749 leaving his estates to the four-year-old Henrietta, but her claim was rejected owing to her French nationality. After many years of legal challenges, the estates, including Bruce Castle, were granted to her husband James Townsend, whom she had married at age 18.
James Townsend was a leading citizen of the day. He served as a magistrate, was Member of Parliament for West Looe, and in 1772 became Lord Mayor of London, while Henrietta was a prominent artist, many of whose engravings of 18th-century Tottenham survive in the Bruce Castle Museum.
After 1764, under the ownership of James Townsend, the house was remodelled again. The narrow east front was remodelled into an entrance front, and given the appearance of a typical Georgian house, while the gabled attics on the south front were removed, giving the south façade the appearance it has today.
James and Henrietta Townsend's son, Henry Hare Townsend, showed little interest in the area or in the traditional role of the Lord of the Manor. After leasing the house to a succession of tenants, the house and grounds were sold in 1792 to Thomas Smith of Gray's Inn as a country residence.