Wellingtonia 58

This fine specimen was captured on Sunday in the playing fields of a private school, Parkside School, at Stoke d'Abernon, on our way to the Military Cemetery at Brookwood.

A private school which appears to be an old-fashioned boys' preparatory school, taking children from the ages of 2 to 13 before it propels them on to greater things. Maybe this includes the Yehudi Menuhin School which is just across the M25. For which you pay up to £6,000 a term. Confusingly, the head is a lady and there is talk of girls. Perhaps they are confined to the nursery department.

There is also a church in the grounds, St. Mary's, where maybe the living is in the gift of the school, as inheritors of the Lordship of the Manor. The substantial entrance being snapped above. The church looked as if it had been heavily restored at some point, but being a Sunday, beyond noting that the grave yard appeared to contain some old graves, we did not like to poke around, never mind go inside.

Wikipedia tells me that the place figured in the Domesday Book and that the church dates back to Saxon times, although the name is taken from the name of its one-time Norman owner, one Sir Roger D'Aubernoun. While the school has taken over the old Manor House

There is also a railway station, well known to me as one which featured regularly in announcements at Waterloo Station.

PS 1: the school playing fields may well abut those of the Chelsea Football Club training ground to the north. Maybe the school makes a good thing out of offering gentrification facilities to the children of the footballers.

PS 2: gmaps does not admit to any such place as Aubernoun. The best it can do is the River Aube to the east of Paris, nowhere near Normandy and the Rue Aubernon in Antibes, even further away - and probably home to Moslem pirates from North Africa at the time in question, rather than to proper Frenchmen.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/wellingtonia-57.html.

Reference 2: https://www.parkside-school.co.uk/. One of the tabs on this site is called 'Creating Gentlemen' where we are told that 'the final two years at Parkside are pivotal for boys developing into young men. Not only are the boys encouraged to lead, take on positions of responsibility and act as role models for the younger boys, but they learn about what it means to be a gentleman’. But this did not stop them having a rather vulgar plastic advertisement pinned to the hedge by the front entrance.

Reference 3: https://stmarysstokedabernon.org.uk/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke_d%27Abernon.

Groups search keys: wgc, bc1.