|
A station and street in central Tottenham, with nearby Bruce Castle as the principal place of interest. The Bruce family built
Tottenham manor house here in the mid 13th century but Edward I sequestered their property after Robert the Bruce rebelled
and became king of Scotland in 1306. The house was rebuilt in 1514 on a scale that would befit visits from Henry VIII and
Elizabeth I. The house was known as ‘The Lordship’ until the late 17th century, when it was remodelled and named
Bruce Castle. With the break-up of the manorial estate in 1789 a new road called Bruce Grove was laid out, and semi-detached
villas were erected on part of its south-western side. Almshouses were built at the northern end of the road in the early
19th century (see image below). In 1827 the Hill family acquired Bruce Castle and converted it into a school. For its first
six years the school’s headmaster was Rowland Hill, who later devised the basis of the modern postal service. The area
remained popular with wealthy merchants, especially Quakers, until the arrival of the railway in 1872. Cheap housing for working-class
commuters filled the area over the remainder of the century, with shops and places of entertainment around the station. After
the school’s closure in 1891, the local board bought Bruce Castle and opened the grounds as a public park in the following
year. The house is now a museum of local history, with a special collection devoted to the postal service.
Bruce Castle is glorified in John Abraham Heraud’s lengthy 1835 poem Tottenham, of which the following lines
comprise a very short extract:
Lovely is moonlight to the poet’s eye,
That in a tide of beauty bathes the skies,
Filling the balmy air with purity,
Silent and lone, and on the greensward dies —
But when on ye her heavenly slumber lies,
Towers of Brus! ’tis more than lovely then.—
For such sublime associations rise,
That to young fancy’s visionary ken,
’Tis like a maniac’s dream — fitful and still again.
 |
