Wellingtonia 74

Following the result noticed at the end of reference 1, that very afternoon we were moved to inspect the other end of Forty Foot Road. Turned left, that is to say west, into Epsom Road from the A24 and there we had a much better specimen, outside a southern outpost of Downsend School, a school which is mostly to the other side of the M25, one of the fleet of private schools servicing the commuters of north Surrey. No doubt these commuters back Mr. Grayling too, not bothered by the trail of wreckage marking out his career in government.

And next to the school we had one of those red brick churches, probably from the period between the wars. Search reveals that it was once a Christ Church belonging to Wimbledon District of the Southern Synod of the United Reform Church. Sold off for redevelopment towards the end of last year. See reference 2.

From there we headed off down Forty Foot Road, passing a good looking recreation ground, and winding up at a site containing a special needs school and Leatherhead Community Hospital, a little way past the entrance to the track which connects with the Tanners Dean of reference 1, snapped above.

The hospital to the left, the school to the right? In any event, a bit of wood behind, to which we public do have access, by permission.

With a by-product being our starting to see why average prices of houses in Leatherhead are very high, post-war London overspill estates notwithstanding. Always been a bit of a mystery before.

Out through Ashtead, where we thought that the area around what was Parsons Mead private school for girls, closed rather abruptly some years ago and now redeveloped, might be a place to investigate with Wellingtonia in mind. Another place which had repurposed a big old house, in this case Claverton House. And then another such house, Parsons Mead. See reference 3 for the story - which includes dark suggestions of asset stripping by another private school outfit, the Vernon Educational Trust, to be found at reference 4. Perhaps the private sector educational sub-sector is as cut-throat as the rest of the private sector!

Ottways Lane for future reference.

Perhaps, given that we have now reached 500 trolleys, we can turn our minds to reaching 100 Wellingtonia. First target, this year's summer solstice? First celebration, a dawn visit to some standing stones for this special occasion?

PS: I was interested to see that one Stella Cunliffe was a former pupil of Parsons Mead school, to be found at reference 5. From where she went to LSE and from where she went on to do bacon. Then to be a statistician for Guinness in Dublin, a successor of sorts to one William Gossett, the inventor of the Student t test, previously noticed at reference 6. From there to the Home Office where she became Director of Statistics, where I got to know her name during our difficulties with counting migrants in and out of the country. I think I was once at a meeting over which she probably presided - with yours truly being well below the salt. Another former pupil was Joan Hassell, a wood engraver and illustrator, from whom at least three (signed, but unnumbered) woodcuts adorn our own walls.

Not improved by my telephone. First, on account of the distortion. Second, on account of being shown at something other than the life size of the white of 8cm by 10.5cm. Of course, the plate was cut long before photocopying and cameras were freely available, and most people who looked, looked at the real thing. Indeed, in the beginning, before the coming of the art wood cut in the 20th century, the point of woodcuts was that they were an effective and cheap way of producing good quality illustrations for mass production. I don't know how many prints you can take from a wood block, and the number will vary with the nature of the block, but I think it is hundreds or even thousands rather than tens. And for newspapers, magazines and catalogues it must have been thousands - but that might have been using a metal block taken from the original wood. Conway talks of very long prints runs being possible with end-cut box blocks, but also of metal copies, better able to stand up to the stresses and strains of the bigger presses which were coming into use as the 19th century wore on.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/wellingtonia-73.html.

Reference 2: https://www.surreygraveyards.org.uk/molevalley/leatherheadchristch.shtml.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsons_Mead_School.

Reference 4: https://www.vernoneducationaltrust.org.uk/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Cunliffe.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/more-hard-for-me-to-know.html.

Reference 7: Nineteenth Century Wood Engraving: its commercial decline - Jan Conway - 2016.

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