Wanstead Manor was a
manor, historically in the English county of
Essex
Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...
and now in the
London Borough of Redbridge
The London Borough of Redbridge is a London borough established in 1965.
The borough shares boundaries with the Epping Forest District and the ceremonial county of Essex to the north, with the London Borough of Waltham Forest to the west, the ...
. It centred on the
manorhouse
A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...
of
Wanstead Hall
Wanstead Hall was the manor house for the Manor of Wanstead, now in the London Borough of Redbridge but historically in the county of Essex. It was later demolished to make way for the construction of Wanstead House.
History Tudor
It was prob ...
, later demolished to build
Wanstead House
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.
History Construct ...
.
The manor is said to have been granted to the monks of
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...
in Saxon times by
Abbot Aelfric, though this cannot be substantiated from any documentary evidence. However, the location was clearly a prized site on the east side of London. In 1086 the
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
states that Wanstead Manor was held from the Bishop of London by one Ralph son of Brian.
Wanstead was then densely wooded, being situated within the
Forest of Essex. It was part of the forest
bailiwick
A bailiwick () is usually the area of jurisdiction of a bailiff, and once also applied to territories in which a privately appointed bailiff exercised the sheriff's functions under a royal or imperial writ. The bailiwick is probably modelled on th ...
of
Becontree
Becontree or Both pronunciations are given as Received Pronunciation in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, but the form is prioritised (). The dialectologist Peter Wright wrote in 1981 that is the traditional pronunciation in the cockney ...
during the Middle Ages and later of the
Leyton
Leyton () is a town in east London, England, within the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It borders Walthamstow to the north, Leytonstone to the east, and Stratford to the south, with Clapton, Hackney Wick and Homerton, across the River L ...
"Walk".
References
Sources
*Wanstead House and the Parklands - a History, www.wansteadwildlife.org.uk. (June 2010). This article has drawn heavily from this source.
*Cornish, Alan. M.Sc. Wanstead Park - A Chronicle. (Originally published by the Friends of Wanstead Parklands in 1982, updated and republished by Wanstead Parklands Community Project in 2006.)
*Starkey, David. Henry: Virtuous Prince. London, 2008.(Tudor history of Wanstead)
*Ramsey, Winston G. & Fowkes, Reginald L. Epping Forest: Then and Now. Published by Battle of Britain Prints International Ltd., 1986.
External links
City of London websiteWren Conservation GroupThe Friends of Wanstead Parklands
{{LB Redbridge
Manors in Essex
History of the London Borough of Redbridge