There is no public monument to him. Mundella Grammar School in Nottingham no longer exists. A request in the mid-1980s for the installation of a commemorative blue plaque at Mundella's London home of 16 Elvaston Place was refused by English Heritage. Cope's portrait of Mundella is no longer on public display. The National Portrait Gallery in London has never shown – other than online – any of the Mundella likenesses it holds. Mundella’s contribution to British society, to education, to labour relations, to the trade unions, and to child protection remains almost, but not completely, forgotten. On 12 March 1844, when aged only eighteen, Mundella married Mary, the daughter of William Smith, a warehouseman of Kibworth Beauchamp in Leicestershire. She was described as "a woman of lofty mind and great determination" and fully shared her husband's literary and artistic sympathies. Her "quiet, clever criticisms" were said to delight her guests and she was credited with an "unselfish, gentle, and sunny disposition" She died after a short illness on 14 December 1890. Their marriage was described as "outstandingly happy" and "blissful" and Mundella was said to have been "inconsolable" at his wife's death. "She was loved and honoured in an extraordinary degree by all from the highest to the humblest," Mundella wrote to his sister Theresa. "What a romance it all seems, Alas! What a terrible drama for me!" His manner after his bereavement was said to have become sharper and more intolerant, as observed by another MP in the House of Commons. Mundella and his wife had two children, Eliza Ellen, known in the family as "Nelly", who married Roby Thorpe of Nottingham, and Maria Theresa, known as "Pen", who remained single and lived at Elvaston Place until her death. 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.