When Mundella was a manufacturer he commissioned a large new villa, designed by the architect Thomas Chambers Hine, at 19 Cavendish Crescent South in the fashionable The Park Estate in Nottingham, and after moving to London when he became an MP they lived, firstly, in Dean's Yard in Westminster, then rented a house in Stanhope Gardens in Kensington before, at the end of 1872, purchasing 16 Elvaston Place nearby. While he had made money in business, Mundella (as an unpaid politician) had never been particularly rich. In 1875 he wrote to a friend: "I care for nothing but to do my duty to my constituency, to live honestly and free of debt, and to leave to the three poor women dependent upon me enough to maintain them in the position in which I may leave them, free from the reverses of fortune and the buffetings of the world." The crash of the New Zealand company which had been the cause of Mundella's resignation left him in severe financial difficulties, but on the recommendation of Lord Rosebery he was fortified by the receipt of a rarely-awarded (and, to some controversy in the press, tardily announced) Civil List pension of £1,200 a year which enabled him to continue to live in Elvaston Place.