Place Name
Sir Fulke Greville, later 1st Baron Brooke of Beauchamps Court (October 3, 1554 – September 30, 1628), an Elizabethan poet, dramatist and statesman who lived locally having acquired the former manor of Henry Percy, Duke of Northumberland, in the late 16thCentury. At the time the East End was a green and pleasant land making it a popular retreat for wealthy Tudors. Greville died at the house, by now renamed Brooke House, after being stabbed by his servant Ralph Haywood, who believed that he had been cheated in his master’s will. Haywood then turned the knife on himself. Greville’s physicians treated his wounds by filling them with pig fat rather than disinfecting them, the pig fat turned rancid and infected the wounds, and he died in agony four weeks later. The house which stood near here, at Upper Clapton Road north of the junction with Kenninghall Road (where BSix College is now), was later acquired by King Henry VIII. From the late 18thCentury it was used as a mental asylum and was knocked down in 1954. This is one of a small number of local streets, including Walsingham Road and Worsley Grove, that have Tudor and Elizabethan connections. It seems to have been built in the early 19thCentury.
