Description
The Heronry Pond was constructed, alongside the other ornamental lakes around the southern and eastern sides of Wanstead Park, between the 1720s and 1740s. Cradock’s 1725 Plan does not stretch far enough to the west for it to be ascertained whether or not work had started on the Heronry Pond by this date, though Rocque’s 1735 map – which appears to depict the areas of both the later Shoulder of Mutton and Heronry ponds as being subsumed into a single water body – provides good evidence that it was at least not then complete.