Wanstead House: An Eighteenth-Century Neo-Palladian Mansion
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- British
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Park
On this page18 sections
History
Wanstead House was an English country house in London, United Kingdom, built between 1715 and 1722 in the emerging Neo-Palladian style. Richard Child commissioned the Scottish architect Colen Campbell to replace the earlier Wanstead Hall with a mansion intended to rival houses such as Blenheim Palace. Its six-column Corinthian portico was described as the earliest English example of its type, and the estate became one of the notable aristocratic residences of eighteenth-century England.
Medieval manor and royal estate
Wanstead Manor was originally part of Essex. Ælfric of Eynsham, an Anglo-Saxon churchman, granted its use to monks attached to Westminster Abbey, the historic royal abbey in London. The Domesday Book, William the Conqueror’s survey of English landholding and resources completed in 1086, described the forested manor as dependent on the Bishop of London.
In 1499, Henry VII acquired Wanstead as a royal hunting lodge and converted it into a secluded retirement residence. His son, the future Henry VIII, spent part of his youth there. The royal estate later received numerous improvements, establishing the grounds as a substantial country retreat before the construction of the great house.
The Child and Tylney estates
The estate was sold in 1674 to Josiah Child, a director of the East India Company, the English trading corporation that developed extensive commercial and political power in South Asia. Richard Child later acquired and consolidated Wanstead Manor, partly through his marriage to Dorothy Glynne in 1703. After Ann Tylney died in 1730, Richard and Dorothy inherited the Tylney estates as well.
Richard Child commissioned Campbell in 1715 to replace Wanstead Hall. The completed mansion, finished in 1722, measured approximately 260 feet by 70 feet, or 79 by 21 metres. Campbell published drawings of both the proposed and executed designs in Vitruvius Britannicus. His first scheme would have produced a house 200 feet long, while the built design extended to 260 feet and had an upper storey covering only part of the central section. The published elevation included a cupola that was never built, and a tower addition proposed later also remained unrealized.
Richard Child was created Viscount Castlemaine in 1718 and 1st Earl Tylney in 1731. An Act of Parliament in 1734 authorized the family and its heirs to adopt the surname Tylney, probably to meet a condition attached to the inheritance. The grounds developed alongside the mansion. George London laid out formal avenues, and in 1735 the 1st Earl Tylney commissioned John Rocque, a mapmaker and surveyor, to develop the gardens further with the ambition of creating a miniature Versailles. The 2nd Earl Tylney continued the planting in the fashionable naturalistic style.
The Tylney-Long inheritance
After the 1st Earl died in 1750, Wanstead passed to his 38-year-old son, John Tylney, 2nd Earl Tylney. The house hosted numerous receptions during his ownership. Both John Tylney and his father were interested in painting and music, and the painter, printmaker, and satirist William Hogarth depicted Wanstead House.
John Tylney died without male issue in 1784. The estate then passed to the son of his elder sister Emma, Sir James Long, 7th Baronet. Since he already held the Long, Child, and Tylney estates, he adopted the surname Tylney-Long, probably in accordance with an inheritance condition.
When Sir James died in 1794, the combined estate passed to his one-year-old son, Sir James Tylney-Long, 8th Baronet. The boy died in 1805 at the age of 11, leaving the estate to his sister Catherine Tylney-Long, who became one of the wealthiest heiresses in England.
Financial collapse and demolition
In 1812, Catherine accepted the proposal of William Wellesley-Pole, later known as William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley. He changed his surname by Royal Licence, a formal authorization issued by the monarch. Although he served as a Member of Parliament from 1812 to 1820, he became chiefly known for extravagance and dissipation.
The marriage settlement placed Wanstead House and its contents in trust, a legal arrangement in which trustees hold and administer property for named beneficiaries. Catherine was to receive £11,000 annually for life, Wellesley was entitled to the remainder during his lifetime, and the eventual remainder was intended for their sons. To secure debts of £250,000, Wellesley mortgaged the trust to his creditors.
Wellesley obtained the office of Usher to George IV in 1822, giving him immunity from arrest for debt, and later fled abroad. In June of that year, trustees auctioned the contents of Wanstead House over 32 days to pay the estate’s encumbrances and protect the future inheritance of Catherine’s son. The building itself was demolished in 1825 after a tenant could not be found, and its materials were sold to meet the same financial obligations.
The terms of Sir James Tylney-Long’s will made the house inseparable from the park, which could not be sold for 1,000 years. This restriction led to the mansion being sold for demolition. The demolition raised only £10,000, compared with a reputed construction cost of about £360,000. Catherine, abandoned by Wellesley for another woman in 1823, died of an intestinal illness in 1825, shortly after the house was taken down.
Later history of the estate
Wellesley retained a life interest in about 1,400 acres of Catherine’s remaining land until 1840. He inherited his father’s title as 4th Earl of Mornington in 1845 and died in 1857. His son inherited the remaining Wanstead manor and placed it in trust for Henry Wellesley, 1st Earl Cowley.
In 1880, the Earl sold 184 acres of the former house grounds to the Corporation of London for preservation as part of Epping Forest. The resulting municipal Wanstead Park officially opened in 1882. Further land was sold to Wanstead Sports Grounds Limited in 1920. The former house site and surviving gardens now form Wanstead Park in the London Borough of Redbridge.
The landscape also underwent major changes during the nineteenth century. In 1813, William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley invited Humphry Repton, a prominent English landscape designer, to improve the gardens. Some of Repton’s informal planting survives. Before 1828, Wellesley felled many trees, damaging the planned avenues, vistas, and clumps. His son secured an injunction, a court order requiring a person to refrain from a specified act, against the felling of a further 2,000 trees in 1828. The injunction was upheld in 1834.
Remains
House site and approach
The mansion itself measured approximately 260 feet by 70 feet and was designed in the Neo-Palladian style, an eighteenth-century movement based on the classical forms and proportions associated with Andrea Palladio. Its principal facade had a portico, or columned entrance porch, formed by six Corinthian columns with ornate leaf-like capitals. Campbell’s published plans, elevations, and central section preserve the intended arrangement of the completed building, together with proposals for features that were not constructed.
Gate piers and former drive
The approach to the house began at entrance gates about one-third of a mile, or 0.5 kilometre, to the west. The two stone gate piers survive beside Overton Drive at its junction with Blake Hall Road, bearing the monogram of Sir Richard Child. From the gates, the drive followed the north side of the Basin along the route of present-day Overton Drive, then followed the lake’s southern contour towards the mansion’s west front.
Front lawn and stable court
A front lawn extended west from the mansion, and part of this area now forms a cricket ground. The Basin lay approximately 275 yards, or 250 metres, west of the house. South of the present golf-course clubhouse, a brick and weatherboarded timber structure incorporates a remnant of the eighteenth-century stable court.
Water and garden landscape
The Basin
The formal grounds included the Basin, a large octagonal ornamental lake. Its position west of the mansion made it a principal element of the approach and garden composition. The surviving lake system remains part of Wanstead Park’s former house gardens.
Fortifications
The Fortifications lie in the Ornamental Waters about 800 yards, or 730 metres, east of the mansion site and southeast of Lincoln Island. Eight small islands are arranged in a circle around a larger central island, where guns for duck shooting were formerly stored. The islands are now overgrown and provide a sanctuary for water birds.
The Glade and Ornamental Canal
The Glade is a broad grassy ride running east through woodland from the former house site. Across the River Roding, where the river forms part of the Ornamental Waters, the wide Ornamental Canal continues the same alignment. Together, these features created a vista approximately two-thirds of a mile, or 1.1 kilometres, long from the house.
Planting and surviving garden features
Avenues and shrubbery
Rhododendron thickets survive as reminders of the former shrubbery, which was crossed by winding paths shown on Rocque’s map. Remains of Evelyn’s Avenue, an avenue of sweet chestnuts, can still be traced southwest from the Basin across Wanstead Flats and Bush Wood. The park also retains remnants of other tree avenues, reflecting the formal landscape established before later naturalistic planting and nineteenth-century alterations.
Temple and Grotto
The Temple and Grotto were built around 1760 as garden buildings within the designed landscape. Both survive as listed buildings, structures officially recognized for special architectural or historic interest. They form part of the remaining garden composition, which also includes artificial mounds and the former lake system.
Other surviving features
Wanstead Park retains an amphitheatre, artificial mounds, the Ornamental Canal, the Fortifications, the Temple, the Grotto, and parts of the former avenue system. The fruit and vegetable gardens southeast of the Great House became part of a golf course, while the broader surviving arrangement preserves elements of the estate’s formal and later naturalistic design.
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