Bolingbroke House, an old red brick three-storey mansion in what was called Five Houses Lane, was on the left at the end of Wakehurst Rd. It became a hospital for the artisanal and middle classes in 1880 (it still houses Bolingbroke Medical Centre) and the greater part became, in 2012, Bolingbroke Academy. Thomas was aware as a lad, of the ever-increasing housing and civic developments, devouring boyhood haunts and semi-rural land. Though greatly interested in houses, homes and buildings, real and imagined, he had an ambivalent relationship with London's relentless growth which
14 CET Ch 1 Infancy 15 CET Ch 4 Books and School friends
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colonised some of these childhood-cherished places; on the other hand, his home streets were a playground almost equal to the Common.16
On Bolingbroke Grove he remembers vividly being a smaller hanger-on of a swelling army of scores of older Board School boys hurling stones at the nearby grammar school students and armed with wooden swords and pikes, or daggers, shields, pistols, bows, arrows and with horns and trumpets, splitting into groups and hunting each other among the front gardens or pretending to be Sioux, Mohicans, or Hurons. Clearly, unlike today's parentally-supervised activities, Thomas enjoyed adult-free exploits, so necessary for working through hazards and risks, discovering small joys, creating a bank of treasured childhood memories.
Walk down the path running next to Bolingbroke Grove. Thomas says this was lined with venerable elms 21 - not now, though. Follow the path; it is bordered with ash, chestnut oak and acer trees.
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