A tidbit for those interested in Wanstead House … happens that an early Georgian giltwood stool which came up for auction at Christie’s on April 24th turned out to originally be from the (now demolished) great house in Wanstead Park.

The seller originally acquired the stool from a 1980 contents sale at Wingfield Castle, home of the late connoisseur-collector Graham Baron Ash.

Initial estimates for the piece were between £15,000 – £25,000, but the Wanstead House provenance, unearthed after a pointer was given to Christie’s by architectural historian John Martin Robinson, resulted in a 5 way battle over the phones between private collectors. The stool eventually sold for a very impressive £135,000.

The contents of Wanstead House were originally auctioned off in 1822 after the then owner and richest woman in England, Catherine Tylney Long was bankrupted by her wreckless husband William Pole Wellesley. The auction was a huge undetaking, lasting for 32 days. As no buyer could be found for the actual house, it was demolished and sold piece by piece to pay Wellesley’s creditors.

Source: Antiques Trade Gazette.

Londoners seem to appreciate snow more than most people, probably because we don’t get very much of it -  and even when we do, it tends not to stick around for very long. The weather forecast yesterday had predicted the possibility of some snow showers this afternoon, but (suprise, surprise) they got it slightly wrong and we woke up this morning to the sight of a pristine white blanket covering the ground outside with big flakes of snow still fluttering down.

The dashing looking snowman pictured was sitting in the grounds of St. John’s Church, Leytonstone. More snowy pictures taken around E11 can be found here in the gallery. If you have any pictures you’d like to share, please send them to gallery@london-e11.co.uk.