Bruce Castle

[4] 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;[5] however, Lysons believes it to have been a later addition.

The house is made of red brick with ashlar quoining and the principal façade, terminated by symmetrical matching bays, has tall paned windows.

[10] Henry Hare, 2nd Baron Coleraine (1635–1708) 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.

[12] 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.

[5] 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".

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.

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.

[19] 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.

Hatfield House, also close to London, had a similar central tower constructed in 1611, as does Blickling Hall in Norfolk, built circa 1616.

Although sources such as Pegram speculate that Constantia committed suicide in the face of a continued relationship between Hare and the Duchess of Somerset,[19] little is known about her life and the circumstances of her early death, and her ghost reputedly haunts the castle.

Every year as the fearful night comes round (it is in November) the wild form can be seen as she stood on the fatal parapet, and her despairing cry is heard floating away on the autumnal blast.

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.

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.

He also led the processing of compensation claims, and the supply of basic housing and provisions, for the 60,000 Loyalist refugees who arrived in England after the independence of the United States.

Although the British government did not offer them organised relief, Wilmot, in association with William Wilberforce, Edmund Burke and George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham, founded "Wilmot's Committee", which raised funds to provide accommodation and food, and found employment for refugees from France, large numbers of whom settled in the Tottenham area.

[11] In 1804, Wilmot retired from public life and moved to Bruce Castle to write his memoirs of the American Revolution and his role in the investigations of its causes and consequences.

[11] After Wilmot's death, London merchant John Ede purchased the house and its grounds, and demolished the building's west wing.

The school was run along radical lines inspired by Hill's friends Thomas Paine, Richard Price and Joseph Priestley;[23] all teaching was on the principle that the teacher's role is to instill the desire to learn, not to impart facts, corporal punishment was abolished and alleged transgressions were tried by a court of pupils, while the school taught a radical (for the time) curriculum including foreign languages, science and engineering.

[26] The construction of the Northern and Eastern Railway in 1840, with stations at Tottenham Hale and Marsh Lane (later Northumberland Park), made commuting from Tottenham to central London feasible for the first time (albeit by a circuitous eight-mile route via Stratford, more than double the distance of the direct road route), as well as providing direct connections to the Port of London.

[27] In 1872 the Great Eastern Railway opened a direct line from Enfield to Liverpool Street station,[28] including a station at Bruce Grove, close to Bruce Castle;[29] the railway provided subsidised workmen's fares to allow poor commuters to live in Tottenham and commute to work in central London.

[33][34] Bruce Castle was among the buildings mentioned in John Abraham Heraud's 1820 Spenserian epic, Tottenham, a romantic depiction of the life of Robert the Bruce:[35] 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!

Built in situ over four weeks, the fabrication became a durational performance, highlighting the role that work and labour play in the development of any artistic or creative pursuit.