Brooke House
This great house survived until the 1950s beside what is now the Lea Bridge Roundabout, when the local authority demolished it and built a college in its place.
In the 1530s the Earl Northumberland gave the house to the king to try to get back into royal favour - he knew there were few things Henry VIII liked better than houses.
The king then passed the mansion on to his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, who proceeded to spend vast sums of money on bringing it up to date – he was to hand it back to the king, perhaps as a means of keeping the royal favour. In the 1530s, Ralph Sadleir oversaw some of the work at the same time his own Bryk Place (Sutton House) was being built. There are records of fifty oak trees from Enfield Chase being felled by order of the king to be used towards building work in Hackney, almost certainly for this work.
Brooke House became known at this time as the King’s Place, and was the biggest and most important house in Hackney. It was described as “a ffayre house all of bricke”.
Like all large houses at this time, Brooke House would need many servants to run it and its garden and home farm. Its refurbishment meant job opportunities for local people, and perhaps for some from further afield. And a household of this size, although much would be produced at home, would bring valuable custom to many local shops.
After a few years Cromwell gave Brooke House back to the king, who had the best of the deal as the house had been expensively refurbished. After the death of Henry VIII the house had many owners, one of whom was the poet Fulke Greville, Baron Brooke. It was he whose name became that of the house, which survived until 1954 when it was demolished by Hackney Council to make way for a college building.
View children's drawings or photos about Mary Tudor and Brooke House.