Wanstead Park Short Walk

6 km.

Leafy stroll in the Borough of Redbridge through the Grade II* listed historic landscaped parkland of Wanstead Park, once home to the Palladian mansion of Wanstead House, compared at the time to Blenheim Palace. Today only two smaller structures, The Grotto and The Temple, remain (and the House itself stood on what is now a golf course), but nevertheless the present smaller park retains some of the layout of Wanstead House’s grounds, especially its many ponds, and provides a perfect venue for relaxing and escaping the urban sprawl, with its plentiful water features and varied woods.

Plenty of options near the station, see text below for details.

Wanstead Park was originally the site of a medieval manor house and later a Tudor mansion, once owned by the Earl of Leicester. In 1667, a wealthy merchant, Sir Josiah Child, bought the house and estate. He started to landscape the gardens and his son Richard, later Earl Tylney, continued the work. The old house (Wanstead Hall) was demolished and replaced by a mansion in the Palladian style in 1715, reputedly costing £360,000, and often being compared to Blenheim Palace. The well-known garden designer, Humphry Repton, who later worked on the grounds, called the finished house and gardens "one of the most magnificent places in this country".
In 1784, the second Earl's nephew inherited the estate, which he then passed on to his daughter, Catherine Tylney Long, in 1812. Catherine married William Pole Wellesley, nephew of the Duke of Wellington, but his extravagant spending led to the downfall of the estate and the auctioning of its contents in 1822. The house itself was demolished in 1825. The two structures which remain from the park landscape, The Temple and the Grotto, are listed and the park itself is a Grade II* listed historic parkland. Though the house is gone, the park provides a perfect venue for relaxing and escaping the urban sprawl.

The River Roding rises at Molehill Green near Dunmow in Essex. It then flows south through a group of villages known collectively as the Rodings and on to London and forms Barking Creek as it reaches the River Thames. Between Chigwell and Woodford Green the Roding Valley Meadows make up the largest surviving area of traditionally managed river-valley habitat in Essex.
Redbridge takes its name from a crossing of the river; Ilford takes its name from Ilefort, "ford on the River Hyle", which was the mediaeval name for part of the Roding.
Within Greater London, The Roding is second only to the Lea amongst the Thames tributaries.

The Temple is situated in the middle of Wanstead Park. It was designed in the 18th century as a feature for the formal gardens of historic Wanstead Park, complete with a classic portico. The building escaped the destruction in 1824 as it served as accommodation for the Estate's Steward. Today, it is used as a southern base for the Epping Forest Keepers and is open to the public as one of the Forest Centres at weekends.

The Grotto was built in the 1760s as a garden feature, following romantic trends for wilder gardens. Grottoes were usually purely decorative. The floor of the main chamber was made of coloured pebbles laid out in patterns and the roof and walls were covered with stalactites, sea-shells and coral. However, this particular grotto did have a purpose: directly below the main room was a boathouse, which opened onto the water. The grotto escaped destruction in 1824 when Wanstead House was demolished, but two years after the park was opened to the public in 1882, it was destroyed by an accidental fire.

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You can also upload photos to the SWC Group on Flickr (upload your photos) and videos to Youtube. This walk's tags are:

National Rail: 03457 48 49 50 • Traveline (bus times): 0871 200 22 33 (12p/min) • TFL (London) : 0343 222 1234

Apr-21 DAC