The place name is probably of Saxon origin and is first recorded in a charter of 1065 as Wenstede. The first element appears to mean ’wain’ or ’wagon’ but the meaning of the full compound is not clear. An alternative explanation by the English Place-Names Society is that the place name derives from the Anglo-Saxon words meaning Wen, signifying a hill or mound, and Stead, a place or settlement. The main road going through Wanstead is the A12. Wanstead High Street includes pubs and independent retailers.

The area was the site of a Roman villa, whilst Wanstead Manor was a Saxon and Norman manor and later formed part of the Municipal Borough of Wanstead and Woodford in Essex until 1965, when Greater London was created. The town has a largely suburban feel, containing open grasslands such as Wanstead Flats, and the woodland of Wanstead Park (part of Epping Forest). The park, with artificial lakes, was originally part of the estate of a large stately home Wanstead House, one of the finest Palladian mansions in Britain, from its size and splendour nicknamed the English Versailles, and the architectural inspiration for Mansion House, London.

In 1707 the astronomer James Pound became rector of Wanstead. In 1717 the Royal Society lent Pound Huygens’s 123-foot focal length 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.

The church of St Mary the Virgin, Wanstead was completed in 1790. It is now a Grade I listed building, and contains a large monument to Josiah Child. It was followed in the 1860s by both the Anglican church of Christ Church and Wanstead Congregational Church.

Wanstead Underground station is on the Hainault loop of the Central line.

Construction of the station had started in the 1930s, but was delayed by the onset of World War II. The incomplete tunnels between Wanstead and Gants Hill to the east were used for munitions production by Plessey between 1942 and 1945. The station was finally opened on 14 December 1947. The building, like many other stations on the branch, was designed by architect Charles Holden. It kept its original wooden escalator until 2003, one of the last Tube stations to do so.

The station has been extensively refurbished since 2006, including the replacement of the original platform wall tiling, which had become badly damaged.