Bruce Castle Museum and Archive

The list description dates the house to circa 1600 — red brick, shallow H-shape — with additions of 1684 and of the early and late eighteenth century; the 1684 frontispiece carries a stuccoed clock-tower stage crowned with a glazed octagon, open drum and cupola. The museum states that the Tudor Tower was built in 1514 using locally made bricks by Sir William Compton, Groom of the Stool to Henry VIII and lord of the manor, and that it is the oldest visible part of the site. Its purpose has never been established: Henry Hare, 2nd Lord Coleraine, writing in 1701, could not tell 'whether it was built for a Monument house or for a Mews or for a Pigeon house or as a Prison', and recent thinking favours a hawks' mews. Rowland Hill, later the originator of the penny post, was headmaster of the radical Bruce Castle School here from 1827; the school closed in 1891 and the house opened as a museum in 1906. The building holds official records of Haringey Council and its predecessors Tottenham, Wood Green and Hornsey, electoral registers from 1890, school admission registers and log books, and special collections on Alexandra Palace and the Prince of Wales Hospital. The grounds became a public park in June 1892, given by the museum as 20 acres, with gates that are not locked. The boundary walls are separately Grade II listed: the south wall to Bruce Castle Park is NHLE 1079218 and the western wall NHLE 1294666, both listed 10 May 1974.