We moved to Wanstead Park Avenue on April 11th 2001 - or rather back to Wanstead Park Avenue. (I was born in Forest Gate Hospital in 1961 and spent the first 9¾ years of my life at one end and now live at the other). I can't say I ever intended to move back; I doubt the thought had really crossed my mind until about three days before we put an offer in on the house and, having lived in various places around the world, it's quite surprising to end up moving just 300 yards.
Our house, originally known as Lyndhurst, is on the Aldersbrook Estate, an area described in 1999 as "an Edwardian Architectural Gem" by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. They can't have looked very closely at our house, because it's pretty ugly - an off day in Edwardian architecture, not helped by a V1 bomb in 1944 - nonetheless the Aldersbrook Estate was deservedly established as a conservation area in 2002.
Shortly after completion we received a bundle of documents from our solicitor - they were all the conveyances and deeds back to 1903 when our house was first built. Despite the age of the house - nearly a hundred years - we were only the fifth owners. The conveyances enabled us to trace the history of our house and, to a limited extent, its former owners (see below).
The Aldersbrook Estate stands on land that originally formed part of Aldersbrook Farm - previously Aldersbrook Manor. It is unusual in that, despite being just 6 miles from the City of London - it is totally surrounded by greenery - with Epping Forest (Wanstead Park, Wanstead Flats and the River Roding) to the north, west, south and north east with just the City of London Cemetery to the south east. Follow the link to see an aerial photo, (Terry Sinclair's website) and click on the red dots to see more photos of Aldersbrook. For community stuff www.aldersbrook.net. To see a map go to www.multimap.com and type in the postcode E12.(Aldersbrook will be top centre)
Although Aldersbrook Manor was originally part of the parish of Little Ilford, the Aldersbrook Estate is now part of Wanstead. The East London Family History Society has more information on Wanstead and Little Ilford parishes.
Wanstead:
- was briefly a spa town during the early 17th century (this was probably the last time anywhere in Essex was fashionable until the advent of Footballers Wives. Anyway the source of the waters is long since forgotten);
- was visited by Samuel Pepys who stayed at Wanstead House in May 1665. He didn't like it much, finding it gloomy, and was pleased to escape to Sir William Batten's at Walthamstow;
- for a while hosted the world's largest telescope, incongruously hung from a former maypole - the rector of Wanstead (James Pound) was a friend of Isaac Newton;
- was where William Penn, the Quaker who founded Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, grew up. There is still a Friends Meeting House in Wanstead. (William Penn's father, Admiral Sir William Penn served with Pepys in the Navy Office. Admiral Penn died at Wanstead in 1670)
- Winston Churchill - voted the "Greatest Ever Briton" (whose plan as Colonial Secretary in the 1920s for using aerial bombardments of poisoned gas against women and children of the civilian population in order to subdue the rebellious Mesopotamian (Iraqi) Arabs in was only let down by the failure of the bombs to explode!) - was MP for Wanstead & Woodford. To be fair to Winston, he wasn't trying to kill anyone "gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected."
- just as Cincinnatus, having saved Rome, retired to his farm, Sylvia Pankhurst - having achieved women's suffrage (votes for women) - retired to run the Red Cottage Tea Rooms & Cake Shop (truth is often stranger than fiction) in Woodford Green, just to the north of Wanstead.
Another famous Quaker, Elizabeth Fry - the prison reformer (now on the back of the £5 note), lived at Cedars (formerly known as Upton Lane House) - just 1½ miles south of Aldersbrook before moving a few hundred yards to Plashet House; her brother, Samuel Gurney, lived at Upton Park nearby. The grounds of his house (known as Ham House) form what is now known as West Ham Park. Another famous resident of Upton was Joseph Lister - the pioneering surgeon, (after whom Listerine is named).
Ann Boleyn lived - and local legend has it, awaited her execution, at Greenstreet House, just another few hundred yards away.
Finally - Arnold Schwarzenegger, now Governor of California - lived for three years just a mile away at 335 Romford Road!
For detailed maps of London including the area around Wanstead - try the Preston Blake Collection or a range of London maps across the ages from Rootsweb. For a more detailed history, try Paul Dart's History of Wanstead.
The area does have some beautiful architecture. In a recent programme for Carlton, Lucinda Lambton reviewed architecture in East London; three of her five choices were in Wanstead and Aldersbrook:
- Wanstead House - the first house built in the neo-Palladian style in England.
- The Merchant Seaman's Orphanage, now Wanstead Hospital
- The Corporation of London's cemetery and crematorium
The land on which our house stands originally formed part of an approach through Aldersbrook Farm to Wanstead House (the neo-Palladian 18th Century house - the seat originally of Earl Tylney - is pictured below)
A predecessor of the house shown above - known as Naked Hall Haws - was owned by Thomas More's son in law. When he died at Tyburn for his catholicism - the house was confiscated and was later granted by Edward VI to Lord Rich. Queen Mary arrived at Wanstead House in 1553 en route to London to assume the throne and it was here that the future Queen Elizabeth I gave her congratulations and pledged her loyalty to Mary.
Later the house was bought by Robert Dudley - the favourite of Elizabeth I - who visited both in 1561 and for several days in May 1578. When he died (heavily in debt) the then Wanstead House and its contents had to he sold to pay his creditors. This seemed to set a precedent which others were keen to follow!
Josiah Child - who made his fortune from the East India Company and through the founding of Child's Bank - spent a great deal of it improving the gardens - a plan of which (dated 1735) is shown below; the area where Wanstead Park Avenue has been built is on the right hand edge of the map below, about a third of the way down.
Hogarth painted a picture of an assembly at Wanstead House - which gives some idea of the richness of the decorations.
In the early 19th century the inheritress of the house, Catherine Tylney Long - the richest woman in England with an income of £80,000 per year - married William Pole Wellesley, the nephew of the Duke of Wellington - and very much the local bad boy. In choosing him over the Duke of Clarence she - unknowingly - turned down the chance to be queen; the Duke of Clarence later became William IV. Both the Duke of Clarence and William Pole Wellesley were spendthrifts, and needed her money to pay off their gambling debts.
Unfortunately for Catherine she had chosen poorly in marriage - just how poorly she was very rapidly to find out. Her groom was so dissolute as to turn up at the wedding without a ring; a local jeweller had to be rounded up to provide one.
As was the law, on Catherine's marriage in March 1812 her assets transferred to her husband. Despite her being the richest woman in England, within ten years he had spent the lot. His excuse was that "to maintain the house cost £70,000 per year and he only had an income of £60,000" - (to put this in context Mr Darcy, Jane Austen's fabulously wealthy hero who 'lived' at the same time, had an income of £10,000 per year).
To meet William Pole Wellesley's debts of more than £250,000 the contents of the house were auctioned in June 1822 - the auction lasted for 32 days. As no buyer for the house could be found it too was demolished and sold to pay creditors (part ended up at the pleasure grounds behind the Eagle in the City Road).
"among other estates thus sold was Wanstead House, Essx, the erection of which had cost more than £360,000, but (in 1823) fetched only £10,000, the materials being cleared by Lady Day in 1825"
The family moved to Italy - where William rapidly engaged in an affair with Helena Bligh, the wife of a Guards officer. Catherine returned to England and died in 1825 - reputedly of a broken heart - and the gardens (now known as Wanstead Park) eventually came into the ownership of the Corporation of London which manages them now as part of Epping Forest. For more information on Wanstead Park - and some of the remaining structures within it - visit the Wren Group or Leyton Guardian website.
As for William Pole Wellesley, he married Helena Bligh in 1828 - very quickly ruined his second wife (despite being related to royalty she spent time in St George's Workhouse and had to apply on several occasions for poor relief) - before she divorced him for adultery. In 1845 he succeeded to the title of Viscount Wellesley, 5th Baron and 4th Earl of Mornington (amongst others) - but died in relative poverty in 1857.
Cockayne quotes from the Annual Register in 1857, "Of the miseries which followed this marriage [to Catherine Tylney-Long], and of the subsequent scandals of the deceased's career, it is better to say nothing. The vast property he had acquired by marriage and all that came from his own family, was squandered; and, after many years of poverty and profligacy, he subsisted on a weekly pension from his relatives, the late and present Dukes of Wellington"
His obituary in the Morning Chronicle read "Redeemed by no single virtue, adorned by no single grace, his life has gone out without even a flicker of repentance; his 'retirement' was that of one who was deservedly avoided by all men." Not that any of this stopped him being one of the great and good - he was an MP for many years and was appointed ambassador to Constantinople and Copenhagen.
In the early 20th century Aldersbrook Farm was still owned by his descendant, Lord Cowley, Earl of Mornington.
He sold the land off - plot by plot - to builders who, between 1899 and 1910, built the Aldersbrook Estate.
But back to the history of our house.
The land was bought by Walter Burrows, a builder, in 1903 for £62 and the house was sold to Esther Maria von Holtorp - the wife of Augustus Erasmus von Holtorp, bookseller - later that year for £455.
In 1915 the von Holtorp's became naturalised British citizens and in 1916 anglicized their name, by deed poll, to Holtorp.
Esther Maria Holtorp sold the house in 1924 for £800 to Charles Edwin Caton - a schoolmaster - who taught at Salisbury Road School in Manor Park.
During the war - according to local history - two V1 "doodlebugs" collided above Wanstead Park Avenue and a number of houses were destroyed or damaged and were rebuilt or repaired in 1947. Our house was one of these.
We're not sure whether it was totally rebuilt or just repaired. Our neighbour's house - which previously adjoined ours - was destroyed and rebuilt entirely (by two Canadian brothers according to its current owner).
Certainly Charles Caton survived the doodlebugs. We know that he sold the house on the 26th January 1955 - but not before replacing the linoleum in the hallway in February 1951. To stop the draughts from coming through the gaps in the floorboards, or for posterity, he left newspapers from the first week of February 1952 under the linoleum - the Evening Standard, some local papers and a Swedish folklore manual (things were quiet in the 1950s and you took your entertainment where you could find it!).
In 1955 the new buyers of our house for £2,300 were Thomas Sheppard - a tug boat captain - and his wife Rose.
Although we don't have the conveyances, we know (from our neighbours - the two Rosas) - that the next buyers of our house were Daphne Payne and her husband in 1975; we believe that Mr Payne was originally a foundryman.
We bought the house from Mrs Payne's estate - and moved in on the 11th April 2001.
Lot 194 Wanstead Park Estate was sold by
William Lyon Esq. of Clavering Court, Newport, Essex
to
Walter Charles Burrows of 6 Wanstead Park Avenue, Manor Park
for Sixty Two Pounds on the 15th May, 1903. The conveyancing being handled by M Harris, of Chas R Taylor, Solicitors, 63 & 64 New Broad Street, London EC.
On the Conveyance is a map - the road now known as Empress Avenue is called "Cook Road" - the road now known as Dover Road is called "Nightingale Road" and it appears that Margaretting Road (which now runs from Northumberland Avenue to Dover Road) was originally intended run parallel to Wanstead Park Avenue right up to Aldersbrook Road.
Also mentioned is an earlier conveyance on October 8th 1898 between the Hon. Francis Leveson Bertie and Andrew Alfred Collyer-Bristow of the 1st part and the Right Hon. Henry Arthur Mornington Earl Cowley of the 2nd part and William Lyon Esq. of the 3rd part.
The house was built quickly and was sold by
Walter Charles Burrows of 6 Wanstead Park Avenue, Manor Park, Essex
to
Esther Maria von Holtorp, formerly of Huddart Street, Bow, Middlesex,
wife of
Erasmus Augustus von Holtorp - a bookseller
for Four Hundred and Fifty Five Pounds on the 26th October 1903
We know from a subsequent conveyance that during the 1st World War on the 25th May 1915 Augustus von Holtorp necame a naturalised British Citizen and - presumably to overcome any anti-German sentiment - changed his name from Von Holtorp to Holtorp by Deed Poll on the 13th April 1916; a popular move at the time - King George very sensibly took the same approach from Saxe Coburg to Windsor.
The next conveyance we have is 21 years later when
Esther Maria Holtorp of 5 Craufurd Drive, Maidenhead, Berkshire
sold the house to
Charles Edwin Caton - a schoolmaster - of 27 Aldersey Gardens, Barking, Essex
for Eight Hundred Pounds on the 19th December 1924.
We know - from documents that we found in the house - that Charles Caton taught at Salisbury School in Manor Park.
The conveyance is witnessed for Esther Holthorp by A G Mackie, Engineer, also of 5 Craufurd Drive, Maidenhead - presumably her son in law.
The next conveyance we have is a further 21 years later when
Charles Edwin Caton - Schoolmaster
sold the house to
Thomas James Sheppard - Tug Captain - & his wife Rose Emma Sheppard of 76 Napier Road, East Ham, Essex
for Two Throusand Three Hundred Pounds on the 26th January 1955.
The conveyance is witnessed for Charles Caton by Ethel Saunders, housewife, of 116 Wanstead Park Avenue.