Bromley Hall
Bromley Hall is an early Tudor period manor house in Bromley-by-Bow, Tower Hamlets, London.[1] Located on the Blackwall Tunnel northern approach road, it is now owned and restored by Leaside Regeneration. Built around 1485, it is thought to be the oldest brick house in London.
History
The Hall is thought to be the oldest brick house in London and was built by Holy Trinity Priory in the 1490s on the foundations of the 12th century Lower Bramerley Manor. These remain visible today in the cellar.
Tree ring analysis has established the Hall was constructed around 1485 at the time of the
The Hall was seized in 1531 during the
From the 15th century this was the manor house of Lower Bromley. The building on the corner of Gillender Street was originally thought to be the gatehouse to Bromley Manor, but it has now been established by the Museum of London that it is the main hall itself built between 1482 and 1495.
Bromley Hall had many subsequent uses, serving as a gunpowder factory during the English Civil War and later as a calico printing works and a residence for wealthy City merchants. William S. Woodin, an entertainer and author who gave a series of monologues at the Polygraphic Hall, lived at the Manor House, Brunswick Road from 1872 till his death in 1889. During the 1880s it was used by the Regions Beyond Missionary Union to house nurses, and in 1914 it became a paediatric training hospital.
Modern use
The Hall suffered bomb damage during
Bromley Hall was purchased in 2001 by Leaside Regeneration. This partnership has completed a £1.1m restoration project to bring the building back into use as serviced office units for small businesses. Leaside is proposing to use the ground floor for a permanent exhibition on the hall, the manor and the Tudors. It hopes to also provide a meeting room, presentation materials and access to elements of the internal structure. These consist of a staircase, an original Tudor arched oak doorframe and the remains of the cellars of a structure pre-dating Bromley Hall itself.
The restoration of Bromley Hall won two London region awards in 2006 from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
References
- ^ "Bromley Hall". British History Online.
- ^ "Leaside Regeneration, the sustainable regeneration company for East London". 14 May 2006. Archived from the original on 14 May 2006. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
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Sources
- English Heritage
- Leaside Regeneration
- No description of this house is contained in any of the historical works relating to the district, but the manor itself is described in Lysons' Environs of London (Middlesex, vol. i., p. 41), and in Dunstan's History of Bromley St. Leonard, pp. 152–154. The house is marked on Rocque's Map of London, 1741–5. Gascoyne's Map of Stepney and Neighbourhood, 1703. Brewer, Beauties, vol. x., page 290.
- "Bromley Hall | British History Online". www.british-history.ac.uk. Retrieved 26 May 2017.