WANSTEAD, an urban district in the Romford parliamentary division of Essex, England, forming a residential suburb of London, on a branch of the Great Eastern railway, 8 m. N.E. of Liverpool Street station. Pop. (1901) 9179. Wanstead Park, 184 acres in extent, was opened in 1882. Northward extend the broken fragments of Epping Forest. Wanstead Flats, adjoining the Park, form another open ground. At Lake House Thomas Hood wrote the novel Tylney Hall. At Snaresbrook in the parish of Wanstead are the Infant Orphan Asylum, founded in 1827, and the Royal Merchant Seamen's Orphan Asylum, established in London in 1817 and refounded here in 1861. In Snaresbrook is Eagle Pond or Lake, 10½ acres in extent.
Wanstead is mentioned in Domesday, and the name is considered by some to be derived from Woden's stead or place, indicating a spot dedicated to the worship of Woden. It belonged before the time of Edward the Confessor to the monks of St Peter's, Westminster, acid afterwards to the bishop of London, of whom it was held at the time of the Domesday Survey by Ralph Fitz Brien. In the reign of Henry VIII. it came into the possession of the crown, and in 1549 it was bestowed by Edward VI. on Lord Rich, whose son sold it in 1577 to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. The original manor house was rebuilt by Lord Chancellor Rich, who was here visited by Queen Elizabeth in 1561, and for her entertainment Sir Philip Sidney wrote a dramatic interlude which was played before the queen at Wanstead garden, and is printed at the end of the Arcadia. Sir Richard Child, afterwards earl of Tylney, built the splendid mansion of Wanstead House in 1715 (demolished in 1822), in which the prince of Condé and others of the Bourbon family resided during the reign of the first Napoleon.