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Wanstead House was a mansion built to replace the earlier Wanstead Hall. It was commissioned in 1715, completed in 1722 and demolished in 1825. Its gardens now form the municipal Wanstead Park in the London Borough of Redbridge.
Wellesley was an MP initially from 1812 to 1820 but was principally known for his dissipation and extravagance. On his marriage the estate had been conveyed to a trust from which Catherine would receive £11,000 per annum for life, with the rest to the use of Wellesley for his life. The remainder was to go to the sons produced from the marriage. To secure a debt of £250,000, he managed to mortgage this marriage settlement trust, which owned Wanstead House and contents, to his creditors. In 1822, to escape his creditors, he obtained the office of Usher to George IV (himself experienced in profligacy and evading creditors) which rendered him immune to arrest for debt, and later he fled his creditors abroad. In June 1822 the trustees of the settlement, under a power contained within the trust and having obtained the requisite agreement of the couple, auctioned off the house's contents in an auction lasting 32 days, in order to pay off the encumbrances on the settled estate, thereby protecting the son's future inheritance.Simons, Nicholas. Reports of Cases Decided in the High Court of Chancery. Vol. 6, London, 1836. pp.497-503, Wellesley v. Wellesley, 1834, in which his son obtained an injunction preventing his father from cutting down further trees in the park. The background to the injunction was recited in detail. In 1825, having found no-one to rent Wanstead House, the trustees demolished it under the same powers and applied the proceeds from the sale of the resultant building materials in a similar fashion. Under the terms of Sir James Tylney Long's will, Wanstead House was inalienable from the Park – which could not be sold for 1000 years. This is why the mansion was sold for demolition. The sum raised was only £10,000 whilst it had reputedly cost around £360,000 to build. Catherine, having been abandoned by her husband for another woman in 1823, died in 1825 of an intestinal illness, shortly after the demolition, no doubt a broken woman.
Between the mansion's demolition and 1840, William retained a life interest in Catherine's remaining lands, to the extent of , in surrounding Wanstead and the adjoining parishes of Woodford, Leyton, Little Ilford and Barking. He continued his parliamentary career from 1830 to 1832, inherited his father's title as 4th Earl of Mornington in 1845 and died in humble lodgings in 1857. The remnant of the manor of Wanstead was inherited by his son William, who had been protected from his father's designs on his maternal inheritance by the intervention of the Duke of Wellington, and he left it in trust for his father's cousin Henry Wellesley, 1st Earl Cowley. In 1880 the Earl sold of the former house's grounds to the Corporation of London for preservation as a part of Epping Forest, and the resultant new Wanstead Park was officially opened by the City of London Corporation in 1882. The Earl's family sold further land to Wanstead Sports Grounds Limited in 1920.
About 275 yards to the mansion's west was a large octagonal ornamental lake called the "Basin", due south of what is now the golf course club-house, built of brick and weather-boarded timber, a remnant of the 18th-century stable-court. The mansion also had a front lawn to its west, part of which now forms a cricket ground. A drive started at entrance gates 1/3 mile due west, the two stone piers of which still survive standing either side of Overton Drive at its junction with Blake Hall Road. The piers are embellished with the monogram of their builder, Sir Richard Child.For other examples of such 18th-century monograms, designed for wrought-iron work, therefore to be seen from front and rear, see Fairburn's Crests of the Families of GB & Ireland, London, 1986, Plates. Spencer's 1771 view of the house would have been drawn from this gate.
This drive skirted the Basin's north side (now Overton Drive) then followed the lake's contour southwards to arrive at the mansion's west front. The extensive fruit and vegetable gardens originally situated to the south-east of the Great House have all gone, these now forming the links of the Golf Course. Two walnut trees which died in the 1980s, the largest high and in girth, probably themselves planted by Sir Josiah Child, stood to the east of the Shoulder of Mutton pond. Thickets of Rhododendron recall the time when part of the Park was laid out as a shrubbery, traversed by the winding paths shown in Rocque's map. Remains of an impressive avenue of sweet-chestnuts, called John Evelyn Avenue, can still be traced in a south westerly direction from the basin, crossing Wanstead Flats and Bush Wood.
The 2nd Earl Tylney continued the plantings, but in the then fashionable natural and non-formal style. In 1813 William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley invited the landscaper Humphrey Repton to improve the gardens - some of Repton's informal planting remains today. Before 1828 Wellesley in a search for money cut down a great number of trees in the park, destroying many of the avenues, vistas and clumps so carefully planted earlier at such great expense by Sir Josiah Child and the Earls Tylney. He had marked a further 2,000 for felling when his son obtained an injunction in 1828 preventing him from proceeding, since it would damage the value of the land, his future inheritance. Wellesley challenged the injunction but it was confirmed against him in 1834.Simons, Nicholas. Reports of Cases Decided in the High Court of Chancery. Vol. 6, London, 1836. pp.497-503, Wellesley v. Wellesley, 1834, in which his son obtained confirmation of an injunction preventing his father from cutting down further trees in the park.
The present Wanstead Park retains some of its layout as the House's gardens. Apart from the lake system, the most evident survivals are the buildings known as the Temple and the Grotto, both built in about 1760 (now listed buildings), and some “mounts” or artificial mounds. Less obvious, perhaps, is a group of islands known as the Fortifications, an amphitheatre, an ornamental canal and remains of some avenues of trees. The Fortifications are situated on the Ornamental Waters about 800 yards east of the site of the mansion, to the south-east of the large Lincoln Island. They consist of eight small islands grouped in a circular pattern around a larger central island on which duck-shooting guns were formerly stored. The bridges by which they were once connected no longer exist. The islands are now somewhat overgrown, providing a sanctuary for water-birds.
The wide Ornamental Canal forms a continuation on the eastern far side of the River Roding, here called the Ornamental Waters, of the broad grassy ride cut through the woodland, known as the Glade, in a direct easterly line from Wanstead House. It therefore would have created a magnificent vista from the house, stretching 2/3 of a mile to the east. It was noted by Eric S. Wood F.S.A.Wood, Collins Field Guide to Archaeology, Third Edition 1972 as being a "magnificent canal".
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