Originally known as Bryck Place, Sutton House[a] was built in 1535 by Sir Ralph Sadler, Principal Secretary of State to Henry VIII,[3] and is the oldest residential building in Hackney.

[5] Machell, a successful businessman and member of the Clothworkers' Company,[6] used Sutton House as country retreat from his principal London home.

[7] Machell the younger lacked his father's financial acumen, and eventually lost the house in the early 1600s to James Deane, a member of the Drapers' Company, after a series of legal disputes.

[17] After Sarah Freemen's death, the school continued in operation until 1740, when the lease was granted to a bricklayer and builder named John Cox who updated and later subdivided the house.

[18] By the 1750s, two tenants were listed in the property, Timothy Ravenhill and Mary Tooke, a wealthy Huguenot widow, suggesting that the house had been divided.

[24] The legal ownership of the estate had grown so complex in the prior two centuries that in the mid-1800s, the Court of Chancery was asked to rule upon the matter, ultimately defining the western half of the property as Sutton House.

[29] Sutton House was bought by the National Trust in the 1930s with the proceeds of a bequest made by William Alexander Robertson in memory of his two brothers killed in World War I.

[34] In the mid-1980s the building was squatted and used as a music venue and social centre, known as the Blue House (a decorated wall from this time is preserved within the current museum).