16th century Originally known as Bryck Place, Sutton House was built in 1535 by Sir
Ralph Sadler,
Principal Secretary of State to
Henry VIII, and is the oldest residential building in Hackney. It is a rare example of a red-brick building from the
Tudor period, beginning as a three-storey
H-plan structure. In 1550, having built a grander house at
Standon, Hertfordshire, Sadler sold the house and surrounding estate to John Machell, a cloth merchant. Machell, a successful businessman and member of the
Clothworkers' Company, used Sutton House as country retreat from his principal London home. The rare, high-quality
linen fold panelling in the parlour is likely to have been installed during his time as owner. Machell died in 1558 and the house passed to his wife Joan and his eldest son, also named John. 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.
17th century Upon Deane's death, the house passed to his niece Olive, who likely rented it to a series of tenants. In the early 1630s, the house was sold to John Milward, a member of the
Vintners' Company and later a silk trader in the
East India Company. After suffering financial losses, he transferred ownership of the house in 1639 to his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Edward Abbot, a member of the Drapers' Company and director of the East India Company. Abbot also lost the house due to financial difficulties, and in the 1650s the house was acquired by Henry Whittingham, who granted a lease to a prosperous widow named Sarah Freeman. Freeman opened a boarding school for girls at the house in 1657; the school, which she operated until her death in 1700, was well regarded. The ownership of the house descended through Whittingham's family to Sarah Wagstaffe, a wealthy widow with four daughters.
18th century 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. 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. During this period, new sash windows were installed and Georgian features were added to an expanded east wing of the house. During the second half of the century, a significant number of homes were built in the surrounding streets and the house came into the possession of the Ball family, who owned the house through several generations. During that time, the house was occupied by a succession of Huguenot tenants.
19th century In 1816 the house was acquired by Reverend Thomas Burnet for a boys' school, which was attended by the novelist
Edward Bulwer-Lytton and
Frederick Young. The building next became ''Milford House girls' school'', which was in operation until 1875. 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. The surrounding estates and their gardens were increasingly replaced by more dense housing developments, which altered the nature of the area. In the 1890s, the two halves of the estate, which had become known as Picton House and Milford House, were acquired by the
Church of St John-at-Hackney for the creation of a men's institute. In 1898, Fleetwood Varley, artist and descendant of
Cornelius Varley, created drawings of Sutton House for the
Committee for the Survey of the Memorials of Greater London, an organisation dedicated to the preservation of historic buildings. In 1904, a major campaign of restoration was completed, after the London County Council had declared the building unsafe the year prior.
20th century 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. During
World War II it was used as a
centre for Fire Wardens, who kept watch from the roof. Following the war, it received little attention from the National Trust, who were focused on the
Country Houses Scheme. From the 1960s it was rented by the
ASTMS Union, led by its charismatic general secretary
Clive Jenkins. When the union left in the early 1980s, the house fell into disrepair. ==Rescue==