The Rise And Fall Of Wanstead House In Essex
1667 to 1857
By Peter Lawrence
Introduction
In compiling this concise history of one of England’s most glamorous country estates I have attempted to bring together well known historical facts and, perhaps for the first time, a series of individual descriptions and comments, contemporary with the period of this story. The object is to emphasise both the power that Wanstead House and other similar estates had in governing the Country and the Empire but also, when placed in the wrong hands, how quickly they were lost.
I hope that this booklet and other works by the Wanstead Parklands Community Project will help bring this period of British history into focus for the benefit of our present multi-cultural society. P.L.
Chapter one: From Tudor hunts to Baroque Gardens
Chapter two: The Classical Period Begins
Chapter three: A New Name and a New Church
Chapter four: The Beginning of the End
Chapter five: Death of a Blaggard
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank so many people, who over the last twenty five years or more have helped and encouraged me to study and promote one of the big stories in our local history. They include past members of Newham Local Studies Library, the staff of the former but never forgotten Passmore Edwards Museum, past and present staff of Redbridge Libraries and many good friends and fellow local historians. All have helped me put together this small contribution to our local heritage in Metropolitan Essex. P.L.
Chapter one
From Tudor Hunts to Baroque Gardens
Wanstead, Robert Dudley’s great centre for hunting and royal entertainment during the Tudor period, continued well into the 17th century with both James I and James II calling on the hospitality of its aristocratic owners. However as the century progressed Wanstead Hall, as it was then called, settled down to being a gentleman’s country estate and after the restoration of the Crown in 1660, Charles II granted the estate to Sir Robert Brooke.
At Sir Robert’s death in 1667 the estate came up for sale. Samuel Pepys, who had visited Wanstead in 1665 thought that the house was old fashioned and was definitely not amused when his Admiralty colleague, Admiral Sir William Penn considered buying the estate, as he muses in his diary, "He told me that he did intend to pull the house down and build a less, and that he should get £1,500 by the old house and I know not what other fooleries."
Eventually the manorial estates Wanstead and nearby Stonehall were sold in 1673 for £11,500 to a certain Josiah Child. This gentleman had come from comfortable obscurity, born in 1630, the son of a London merchant. At the age of 25 he was furnishing navy stores at Portsmouth where he secured a contract to supply rum. In 1669 he was knocking on the door of the Admiralty. However the Duke of York, High Admiral of England, kept the door firmly closed in the face of this mere merchant, much to the pleasure of the Navy Board secretary, Samuel Pepys. Josiah worked hard outside the Admiralty’s inner sanctum and became Deputy Treasurer to the Fleet and a director of the East India Company. Ten years later he became Governor of the East India Company and its somewhat despotic ruler. Josiah was then knighted and made a baronet.
John Evelyn, in a diary entry for 16th March 1683 not only noted the fantastic gardens at Wanstead, with its "lines of Walnut trees and fish ponds many miles circuit" but noted that the estate was now worth £200,000. Many believe that Evelyn used his skills to assist Josiah Child create the base for this fabulous baroque garden but no attempt was made during Josiah’s life to improve or replace the Tudor house as Kip’s beautiful 1710 "bird’s eye view" of the estate clearly shows. Due to the premature deaths of two of his wives, Josiah married three times. His wealth provided his daughter with a dowry of £50,000 and in 1689 he became Sheriff of Essex.
Then in 1698 there was an outbreak of smallpox in the Wanstead household, which took his eldest son Barnard, a black slave and an estate bailiff. Sir Josiah Child himself became ill and died in 1699 and buried in the adjacent medieval St Mary’s church, complete with a great baroque memorial. He was succeeded by his son, also Josiah, by his second wife, who leased the estate to his half brother Richard. Josiah junior died in 1704 without children so the estate and the baronacy passed to Richard, who was further titled Viscount Castlemain, because of his wife’s inheritance from her family.
Sir Josiah Child monument in St Mary's church, Wanstead
Chapter two
The Classical Period Begins
It was Richard Child, with his and his wife’s inheritance plus his continuing expanding fortune through the East India Company that allowed him, over a period of years, to turn his estate at Wanstead into a house and garden fit for royalty yet alone a wealthy merchant.
By 1706 he was improving the gardens with the help of George London and planned to supplement the water supply from the River Roding to expand the lake system. By 1713 his gardener and surveyor, Adam Holt, had tapped into an artesian well at nearby Snaresbrook and brought the water into the estate via a narrow canal that became known as the Holt River. During this period he had decided to replace the Tudor "Wanstead Hall" and so he leased a town house at 5 St James’s Square London, which still exists, and as an aside bought the manorial rights of the neighbouring parish of Woodford.
In 1714 Richard Child was "ready to build" and he commissioned the Paladian architect Colen Campbell to design a new classical house.
Campbell was originally a Scots lawyer but designing houses overtook his practice, especially when in 1717 Lord Burlington became his patron and commissioned him to build his house in Piccadilly, now the Royal Academy. Campbell’s Paladian or Venetian revival style of architecture was popular with the ruling Whig Party and this was further enhanced when he was commissioned to build at Wanstead.
Richard Child had left the Tory party and become a member of the Whigs in 1715 and consequently Walpole rewarded him by making him Baron Newton in 1718. Due of his marriage to a wealthy landowner, by an Act of Parliament in 1731 he and his heirs took the name Tylney and he became the first Earl Tylney of Castlemaine.
Colen Campbell offered two main designs, with variations in both. One included plain windows, side wings for services and guests, the other had flanking towers but neither were chosen. Campbell later published these offerings in his publication "Vitrevieus Brittanica". The final design showed the centre of the house to be in the style of a roman temple. The flat or "unrelieved" elevations either side, broken only by massive keystones and pediments around the windows must have appeared simple in contrast to Vanbrugh’s baroque that had been the fashion. These features alone made the design totally unique at the time. The pediment above the great portico was decorated with the arms of the Child family and walking through the columns, you would see above the doors leading into the house a large medallion representing Colen Campbell, an unusual honour for Richard Child to bestow on his architect. Proudly sitting on an elevated position, this great white Portland stone rendered mansion, its frontage measuring 260 feet and a depth of 75 feet, with the imposing Corinthian columned portico facing towards London, it would have shined like an architectural beacon and amazed travellers for miles around.
It appears the building of the house was completed by 1720 and estimated costs range from £200,000 to £360,000. Over the following twenty years Richard Child spent an additional £100,000 improving the grounds including expanding the lakes, perhaps being assisted by Lancelot (Capability) Brown. In Daniel Defoe’s "A Tour Through the Eastern Counties 1722" he refers to southwest Essex when he writes, "….these villages filled with fine seats, most of them built by the citizens of London, as I have observed before, but the lustre of them seems to be entirely swallowed up in the magnificent palace of Lord Castlemain." Wanstead House, at the time architecturally unique in England, had arrived.
Under Richard’s stewardship the 300 acre estate continued to flourish. Jeanne Rocque, the Cartographer Royale, was commissioned in 1735 to prepare plans for extensions to the house (not built) and further landscaping to turn Wanstead into an English "Versailles". By 1745 the lakes and parks had reached their height and in 1748 Peter Kalm the renown Swedish botanist, whilst wintering in England on his way to America, was amazed when he visited Wanstead; "My Lord Tylney’s magnificent house resembles a royal palace rather than a private man’s home…..many rooms furnished in the most costly way….one room was not like another". Kalm’s diary also notes that somebody had informed him that Richard had overspent as sections of the garden were incomplete. That comment may indicate the reason why the pavilions on either side of the house, shown on Roque’s map, were not built.
Wanstead House as a structure was undoubtedly very grand. The Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1768 compares five houses, Holkam, Houghton, Blenheim, Wilton and Wanstead, finding Wanstead unique in design as it was the only house that had a ballroom and if the two side pavilions had been built, perhaps it would have been considered the best by far. Had Richard overspent or was he just being politically correct by not upstaging the aristocratic owners of the other four? The house therefore remained during its short life structurally unaltered except for the Ionic pilasters, fixed to the garden front in 1847. They came from Lord Chandos’s "Cannons Place" at Stanmore in Middlesex, after that house was demolished due to the owner’s mishandling of his personal fortune. A problem we shall return to in this story. Wanstead House, built of brick and faced with Portland stone had a frontage of 260 feet with a depth of 75 feet. There were three storeys plus the servants sub-ground level. Seventy rooms had fifty eight fireplaces, with the family rooms on the ground floor, state and entertaining rooms on the first floor with additional bedrooms on the second floor. The backgrounds to family paintings by William Hogarth (1734) and Joseph Nolekens (1740) clearly show the sumptuous décor of the principle first floor rooms.
In 1750 the estate passes to John, 2nd Earl Tylney who spent most of his time living in Italy, collecting various works of art for display at Wanstead. When at Wanstead he had built the Grotto (now a ruin), the Temple (still with us) and the Great Lake (Lakehouse Estate developed on the site from1900). He also gave fabulous parties. Horace Walpole writes of him in 1755, "One of the most generous creatures in the world." In 1764 King George III and Queen Charlotte, escorted by Light Horse outriders, were guests of John but perhaps the best description of one of these revelries was penned by an Italian nobleman, describing a party on the Ornamental Waters in 1768;
"Many lights appear in the trees and on the water. We are off (in boats) and have great excitement fishing up treasure (presents) tied to bladders. His Lordship is hailed from the
shore by a knight, who we are told is King Arthur, ‘Have you the sacrifice my Lord?’, who answers ‘No’. ‘Then take my sword and smite the water in front of the grotto and see what my wizard has done, take also this dove and when asked, give it to the keeper’.
Off again towards some distance from the Grotto, the lights are small and water still. The giant eagle appears and asks, ‘Have you the sacrifice?’ ‘No’ my Lord answers. ‘So be it’. And disappears (eagle) in steam. His Lordship smites the water with King Arthur’s sword. All the company are still, a rumble sucking noise comes in from of the Grotto, the water as if boiling and to the horror of all the company, both on the water and on the shore, scream with fright, appearing as though from the depths of hell arose a ghastly coffin covered with slime and other things. Silence as though a relief, when suddenly with a creaking and a ghostly groaning, the lid slid off and up sat an apparition with outstretched hand screeching in a hollow voice, ‘Give me my gift.’ With such violence that some of the company fell into the water and had to be saved and those on the shore scrambled always. Confusion was everywhere. We almost fainted with fright and only stayed from the same fate by his Lordship, who handed the keeper the dove, the keeper shut its hand and with a gurgling noise vanished with a clang of its lid and all went pitch. Then the roof of the Grotto glowed two times, lighting the water and the company a little. Nothing was seen of the keeper or his coffin, as though it did not happen." Some party!
Chapter three
A New Name and a New Church
In 1784 John dies and as he had no family the estate passed to his sister’s son Sir James Long of Draycott Cerne in Wiltshire. He took the name Tylney-Long. During his ownership the nearby medieval parish church was replaced in 1790 with a modern building immediately to the north. The architect, Thomas Hardwick, designed the church to compliment the great house, brick built and faced with Portland stone with a west porch of classical columns. Under the direction of the Rev. Samuel Glasse, former chaplain to the King, the building was completed at a cost of £9,150. St Mary’s church survives, now protected as a grade I listed building, complete with its stone steps, the first high enough to step onto from a carriage and the beautiful Georgian style railings and gates for the vehicles to drive in and drive out. The monument to the founder of this great classical estate, Sir Josiah Child stands proudly in the chancel. Much of the interior layout of the church has not altered, including the pews and the galleries.
We must not ignore lesser buildings that survive from these heady times. The stables for the estate survive to the east of the church, now housing Wanstead Golf Club. It doesn’t take much imagination to visualise the scene at the front of Wanstead House, situated where the first fairway is today, about 300 yards to the south of the arch into the stable yard. After noble passengers had alighted at the base the flight of 26 stairs up to the principle first floor, their carriage would have been driven away directly across the gravelled courtyard, through the stable arch and out of sight. The stable arch has long been filled in and is now the entrance into the golf clubhouse.
James and his wife Lady Catherine had a daughter, also named Catherine and a younger son James. When in 1794 James senior died the children became "Wards in Chancery". The estate passed in principle to James the infant son who died in 1805, therefore the fortune passed to the daughter Catherine who also was still a minor. Lady Catherine removed her daughter to Grosvenor Square, Mayfair where Catherine completed her education and was introduced to London society. During her minority Wanstead House was occupied by the Prince de Conde and other French royal exiles during the "Reign of Terror", also in 1806 King George III reviewed 10,000 troops on nearby Wanstead Flats. Was this a display of political muscle aimed at the French revolutionary leaders?
In1809 Catherine legally became an adult as a London newspaper reported "Lady Catherine Tylney Long commenced her career in the fashionable world on Monday night in Grosvenor Square with a splendid ball. Her Ladyship possesses an immense fortune". Catherine’s estates were valued at £1 million and although she had to pay out annuities to her mother and other relatives, she still had an annual income of £80,000 a year. Suitors for her hand in marriage were closing in. Apparently one suitor was the Duke of Clarence who was an immense embarrassment to the royal family. He sired enough children to have him shipped out to Antigua for several years, just to keep him away from the gossips. His house still looks over Nelson’s Harbour today. But what if Catherine had married him? He later became William IV and she would have become Queen. Maybe she would have been better off marrying him rather than the person finally chosen. As so often happens, the prize was won by the least worthy.
On the 14th March 1812, in St James’s church, Piccadilly Catherine married the Hon. William Pole-Wellesley, elder son of the 3rd Earl of Mornington, the younger brother of the Duke of Wellington. On the day of the marriage William was penniless and perhaps the writing was on the wall when, as newspapers reported, the bridegroom had forgotten the ring and one was hurriedly purchased from a nearby shop before the ceremony could be completed. A condition of the marriage was that the bridegroom had to adopt the additional surnames of his bride and became William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley, much to the future pleasure of Fleet Street cartoonists and society journalists. Another marriage contract was the written agreement that after the future heir, two subsequence children would each be given an annuity valued at £32,500 per annum. As a couple, William and Catherine planned for an heir and two spares. The agreement was signed a day before the wedding. How romantic!
It is certainly worth mentioning the bride’s ensemble. A robe of Brussels lace over a satin dress was valued at 700 guineas. Her bonnet and veil, both of Brussels lace, were valued at 150 and 200 guineas respectively. Finally her necklace was valued at 25,000 guineas. So William, his new wife and her fortune came to Wanstead with the opportunity to recover himself from his debts but the opposite was to happen, indeed he appears to become even more reckless. Wanstead House had just twelve more years to grace London’s society and the Essex countryside.
Chapter four
The Beginning of the End
William, on arrival at Wanstead, immediately had the three gates into his park locked thus denying access across the grounds enjoyed since time and memorial. A Mr Wilson, gentleman, from East Ham employed a blacksmith to cut the locks and chains and forced his way across the park. William took Mr Wilson to court at Chelmsford in March 1813 to test the legality of shutting the gates. Judge Heath and a special jury found against William and the park was reopened. Forest enclosure remained a target for William, for in 1818 John Hanson of Great Bromley and Woodford in Essex, mentions in his diary of "Mr Wellesley’s bold attempt was now to destroy the beauties and the enjoyments of the whole neighbourhood by the entire enclosure of both Epping and Hainault Forests by Act of Parliament. In this however he was fortunately defeated." Hanson went on to praise Sir John Hall, another Woodford resident, who chaired the committee that opposed the Bill.
Many stories have been penned highlighting William’s dubious character. His hunting parties were the talk of society. He had his men dressed in coats of Lincoln green and high boots. Whilst out with the hounds he would scatter money freely among bystanders and afterwards, when he and close friends would retire to Wanstead House, his men would dine sumptuously at local inns at his expense. Another story was that he apparently locked Catherine in the Grotto, she having to be rescued by the butler who positioned a boat under a window from where she escaped. This story, recited throughout the 19th century shows a cruel side, which together with financial and marital problems yet to come, may indicate why none of their three children ever married although they all lived very comfortable lives. As a couple William and Catherine continued the tradition of Wanstead being the centre of great society entertainment and they were supported by the Duke of Wellington who, in 1816, paid them the honour of visiting by way of riding solo in full uniform from London with dragoon soldiers as escort. The Duke also provided them with sumptuous gifts for the house, purchased in Paris after his successful campaigns against Napoleon.
William invited Humphry Repton, the famous landscape gardener to Wanstead in 1814 to suggest improvements to the grounds. Repton’s paintings of the house and grounds give us a wonderful insight to this fabulous place just before the beginning of the end, including a great floral pareterre, placed in front of the house that was to last just eight years. Repton’s scheme of planting informal groups of trees, still survive in Wanstead Park today by the Long Water, west of the Grotto and east of the Shoulder of Mutton pond. As does an example of his trickery, in Reservoir Wood, just east of Blake Hall Road can be found a great oak tree; where closer inspection reveals uniform undulations around the trunk, telling you that when planted, it was ten trees strapped together.
William’s excessive life style and gambling continued, the drain on his wife’s income could not go on forever and by 1822 he had squandered the fortune and was deeply in debt. Mr Rush, the United States Minister (Ambassador) writes in his diary; "No wonder that he has been brought to the hammer, when everyone knew that to keep it (the mansion) with its accustomed hospitality, adding the carriages and servants necessary for the London season when Parliament was sitting required at leased £70,000 sterling a year, when all he had was but £60,000". That year, 1822, creditors seized the estate and on 10th June began the celebrated auction of the contents of Wanstead House and its estate buildings. With the exception of the family portraits, 5,000 lots were sold in thirty two days, raising £41,000. This meant that by 1823 creditors owed less than £200 were paid in full and those owed more than £200 were paid half. Examples of creditors include a veterinary surgeon owed £1,400 and a fishmonger owed £700.
It appears that William and Catherine spent long periods abroad to escape creditors. This is born out in a letter sent to William by his friend and attorney, Lord Maryborough in 1823. It includes, "…..we who are entrusted with the care of your affairs have persuaded ourselves that if you persevere for only three years you may return here in affluence and credit….with all your creditors satisfied, with the Wardenship of the Forest secured to you and your family, with Mrs Wellesley’s diamond saved; with Wanstead Park undiminished in beauty and remaining free for you to do with it as you please……and with a clear income of £13,000 a year."
The suggestion from his attorney was either ignored or it didn’t work as creditors’ demands continued and the estate was put up for sale but because of charges against it, it could not be sold, therefore the only saleable asset was the house. Eventually in 1824 at a "Dutch auction" when the envelopes were opened the highest bid of just £10,000 went to a consortium of builders based in Norwich and contracted to Sir John Soane. The condition of the sale was that the house had to be "….removed from the face of the earth by Lady Day 1825". Comments at the time suggest it disappeared, including most of the foundations in a matter of weeks, with the great marble staircase sold on to Lord Chesterfield for his new house in Mayfair (demolished 1920).
Chapter five
Death of a Blaggard
If you think that was the end of it for the Wellesleys you would be wrong, as in this same year, 1824, a London newspaper found out that in 1821 they had holidayed in Italy with friends, namely Captain Thomas Bligh of the Coldstream Guards and his wife Helen. Apparently Captain Bligh had to return to England on business, leaving Helen with William and Catherine. During that stay William and Helen had an affair. When the news broke in 1824, William denied it and threatened the newspaper. Catherine immediately separated, taking their three children to a house in Richmond but continued to pay William an allowance of £4,000 a year. Capt Bligh successfully sues William for "abducting and debauching" his wife, claiming £10,000 damages but was awarded just £6,000. William then "high tails" it to Paris. In 1825 a forlorn Catherine dies, her remains buried in the family chapel at Draycott Cerne, Wiltshire and the children are made wards of court with the Duke of Wellington as one of their guardians. The same year Capt. Bligh divorced Helen, who later marries William. A terrible choice as eventually she will find herself seeking the support of St George’s workhouse in Borough, South London.
Returning to William, who was now sheltering in Paris, perhaps plotting somehow to get his hands on his older son’s inheritance. He returns to England and becomes M.P. for St Ives in 1830, joins a group of rebel Tories who brings down his uncle, the Duke of Wellington’s government. He is legally denied access to his children but manages to prise his daughter, Victoria, away from her legal guardians and therefore was in contempt of court. In July 1831 he was arrested and put in the Fleet prison, quickly released and became M.P. for Essex later that year! He had the cheek in an election speech to include, "Now gentlemen, all of you that are husbands, go home and be as a good a husband to your wife as I am to mine."
That same year the poet, Thomas Hood, rents Lake House on the estate and there he writes "Tylney Hall" and "The Epping Hunt".
William continued to own 1,400 acres of land in Wanstead, Woodford and Leyton and in 1856 records show that he was still holding Manor Courts in Wanstead. However the end is not far away. 1857 finds him living in an apartment in Thayer Street, just off Manchester Square, London. This was being paid for out of the residue of his now dead uncle, the Duke of Wellington’s pension. William, on 1st July 1857 suddenly collapses at dinner and dies. His coffin still rests behind a metal grill in the catacombs at Kensal Green Cemetery. A newspaper proprietor summed up what the establishment must have thought of him, "A spendthrift, a profligate, a gambler in his youth – he became a debauchee in his manhood. Redeemed by no single virtue, adorned by no single grace, his life has gone out, even without a flicker of repentance." Amen to that.
Author’s biography
Since retiring from Royalty & Diplomatic Protection at Scotland Yard 15 years ago Peter has dedicated his life to studying, teaching and lecturing on various aspects of local, Essex and London history. During this period he has tutored for the W.E.A., Wansfell College, Denman College, the Field Studies Council, lectured for National Trust Associations and more recently N.A.D.F.A.S., for which he travels all over the Country. He has broadcast on TV and local radio several times and since the late 1980s has published several local history pamphlets and books covering the development of places in southwest Essex. He is Chairman of Woodford Historical Society.
In 1994 he became an elected Member of Redbridge Council and although moving away from the area in 2002, continues to assist in local matters as Chairman of Redbridge Arts Council and Redbridge Conservation Advisory Panel.
Being involved with the "Wanstead Parklands Community Project" has allowed Peter to use his knowledge to project the history of Wanstead Park to a wider audience.