Its curriculum was advanced for its time, and it did not use corporal punishment.
After languishing around 1850, it was enlarged by Arthur Robert Abbott, who admitted non-Quaker boys but after buying the school in 1877, closed it, and took Anglican orders.
It was located on the south side of Tottenham Green next to the building of a former Quaker school which had closed some two years before its opening.
Many families from Grove House continued the connection and sent their boys to Leighton Park, such as the Cadburys, Foxes, Frys, Backhouses and Hodgkins.
The original Grove House in Tottenham Green was acquired by Middlesex County Council for Tottenham Polytechnic in 1897 (then demolished in 1936 to make way for a new building[3]), which later (after a few further intermediary name changes and transferrals between various local government bodies) became the College of North East London in 1990, which in turn is now The College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London following a merger with Enfield College August 2009.