The House that Ralph Built

Chalk, pen, and ink sketch by Hans Holbein the Younger of an unidentified man, thought to be Ralph Sadleir

The house stands set back at an angle from busy Homerton High Street in Hackney, East London. At first glance, with its gables and elegant sash windows, you might date it to the late 17th century, but look closer at the tiny bricks and the faint remains of decorative black diamond pattern-work, and you realise it is considerably older than that.

The name, Sutton House, is erroneous. It was believed, at one time, to have been owned by Sir Thomas Sutton, who founded Charterhouse School in 1611, (1) but the land where the house now stands was in fact owned by one Sir Henry Sadleir – who probably had a house here before his son, Ralph, had it pulled down to build the mansion, known in its day as the Bryk Place, between 1534 and 1535.

Ralph Sadleir was one of history’s survivors. Raised in the household of Thomas Cromwell, he became first Cromwell’s Secretary and then worked directly in the King’s service. (2)

Hilary Mantel introduces him in Wolf Hall – “Rafe’s [sic] eyes are blue, his hair is sandy brown, and you couldn’t take him for a Cromwell. But he is still a tribute to the man who brought him up – dogged, sardonic, quick on the uptake.” (3)

Early 16th-century Hackney was a country village, a convenient three miles from the City of London. A number of wealthy citizens, including Thomas Cromwell himself, also had rural retreats there, and Bryk Place reflected Ralph Sadleir’s position as a man of rising fortune.

His star ascended along with his mentor’s and he was knighted in 1540, the same year as Cromwell’s fall from grace and execution. Sadleir escaped his mentor’s fate and later re-entered royal service under King Henry and King Edward, and then Queen Elizabeth. He moved with his wife, Helen, and seven children to a new, grander mansion in Hertfordshire and sold Bryk Place in 1550. Thus began the house’s passage through the hands of various merchants and traders, schoolteachers and local worthies, including a number of Huguenot families. It was modernised and extended and eventually split into two properties around 1751 (and reunited in 1895). However, the building renovations were casual, and this now allows visitors to the house to open up the Georgian panelling to see the arch of a Tudor fireplace, or discover the 16th-century garderobe in the corner of a “Victorian” room. In the room that once opened off Sir Ralph Sadleir’s ground floor Great Hall, you can view the rare linenfold panelling and open up the panels like an Advent calendar to see traces of Ralph’s original colour scheme in trompe l‘oeil – yellow, green and red – and the remains of vivid decoration in the fireplace surround.

Hilary Mantel visited Sutton House whilst writing Wolf Hall, and described her impressions of the house in The Guardian newspaper. She recalled how the sight of the “small rosy bricks” from 1535 in the cellar, one with a trapped blade of grass, and one with a dog’s paw print, moved her to “do what a novelist has to do: unfreeze antique feeling”. (4)

As a final note, in the early 19th-century one wing of the house was occupied by a “first class gentleman’s boarding school” (5) and one of the pupils was Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Although his schooldays there ended ignominiously, he went on to become Baron Lytton of Knebworth, the author of a great many popular historical novels, such as The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), Rienzi (1835), and Harold (1848) – and of course the creator of the immortal opening lines of Paul Clifford (1830): “It was a dark and stormy night …”.

Sutton House is now owned by the National Trust and is open to the public. Visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sutton-house

About the contributor: Mary Seeley is a member of HNR’s review team and has been a National Trust volunteer at Sutton House for many years.

Notes:
1. Gray, Mike (1997) Sutton House, Swindon: Acorn Press for the National Trust, p.15.
2. Ibid., p.7
3. Mantel, Hilary (2009) Wolf Hall, London: Fourth Estate (Harper Collins, p.105
4. “Author, author: Unfreezing antique feeling”, Guardian, August 15th 2009 (www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/15/hilary-mantel)
5. Gray, p. 24

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Published in Historical Novels Review  |  Issue 72, May 2015