Wanstead, Essex Genealogy

England   Essex   Essex Parishes



Parish History
Wanstead St Mary the Virgin is an Ancient Parish in the county of Essex. Other places in the parish include: Snaresbrook.

The parish church dedicated to St Mary the Virgin existed as early as 1640 and was re-built in 1787-1790 with Sir James Tylney-Long paying for the building. It replaced an earlier smaller church which had become dilapidated. In March 1787 a motion was passed that re-building the church was essential and a petition was laid before Parliament explaining that the church had become “much decayed, and is not sufficient large.” The new building was to be capable of holding 500 people and was to cost £3,100, although, perhaps inevitably, the final costs amounted to £9,150.

The fate of “Wanstead House, the magnificent seat of Earl Tylney” was a sad one. William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley, the nephew of the Duke of Wellington married the heiress to the estate, Catherine. However in 1822 the contents of the house were auctioned off to pay for his extravagances and to settle his gambling debts. The following year, the house itself was demolished.

The name Wanstead is first recorded about 1050. Although it is not known when the parish of Wanstead came into existence, the first mention of the parish was in 1208. An account tells of a dispute between the rector, John of St. Laurence and the Priory of Holy Trinity, Aldgate about tithes. The rector was also canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The names of the subsequent clergy are recorded, but Wanstead did not play an important role in history until Tudor times. The manor of Wanstead and the right to appoint the rector passed into royal hands when it was sold to Henry VII in 1499 for £360. Henry VIII’s son Edward VI passed the manor to Sir Richard Rich, one of the chief accusers of Sir Thomas More. As Lord Chancellor, Rich made Wanstead his country residence and rebuilt the house. When Mary Tudor was proclaimed Queen in Norwich and returned to London to oust Lady Jane Grey, her sister Elizabeth rode out to meet her at Wanstead and they then entered the City in triumph.

Rich died and Wanstead was bought by Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester who entertained the queen there from time to time. After Leicester’s death, it passed to his step-son, another favourite of Queen Elizabeth, Robert Deveureux, earl of Essex.

In 1707 the astronomer James Pound became rector of Wanstead. In 1717 the Royal Society lent Pound Huygens's 123-foot object-glass, which he set up in Wanstead Park. Pound's observations with it of the five known satellites of Saturn enabled Halley to correct their movements; and Newton employed, in the third edition of the Principia, his micrometrical measures of Jupiter's disc, of Saturn's disc and ring, and of the elongations of their satellites; and obtained from him data for correcting the places of the comet of 1680. Laplace also used Pound's observations of Jupiter's satellites for the determination of the planet's mass; and Pound himself compiled in 1719 a set of tables for the first satellite, into which he introduced an equation for the transmission of light.

Pound trained his sister's son, James Bradley, and many of their observations were made together, including the opposition of Mars in 1719, and the transit of Mercury on 29 October 1723. Their measurement of γ Virginis in 1718 was the first made of the components of a double star and was directed towards the determination of stellar parallax.

In 1727, Bradley embarked upon a series of observations using a telescope of his own erected at the rectory in Wanstead, now the site of Wanstead High School. This instrument had the advantage of a large field of view and he was able to obtain precise positions of a large number of stars that transited close to the zenith over the course of about two years. This established the existence of the phenomenon of aberration of light, and also allowed Bradley to formulate a set of rules that would allow the calculation of the effect on any given star at a specified date.

Wanstead was a part of the Municipal Borough of Wanstead and Woodford until 1965, when Greater London was created.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church records
Contributor: Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts, non conformist and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

Online images are available Seax - Essex Archives Online From the Essex Record Office

Essex Online Parish Clerks (OPC)

St Mary Overton Drive Baptisms 1640-1863 Marriages 1641-1838 Burials 1641-1863: ERO

Christ Church Built 1861 as chapel-of-ease to St Mary

St Gabriel Aldersbrook Rd Baptisms 1903- date Marriages 1914- date: Not deposited

Our Lady of Lourdes (Roman Catholic) Cambridge Park Formed 1919

Census records
Index for the Census may be searched at FamilySearch Historical Records

http://www.1881pubs.com/ for details of public houses in the 1881 census

Poor Law Unions
West Ham Poor Law Union, Essex

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Essex Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
Contributor: Add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.