Looking For Fatty & co. in Peterswood/Bourne End
Posted: 06 Jan 2008, 21:22
A few days ago I went to Bourne End to see if I could locate Fatty's house. Perhaps I did, you can judge for yourself. Anyone interested can follow my journey using Google Earth, the facility that allows you to zero-in on any part of the planet. Yes, we live in a brave new global Peterswood! The website link is:
http://maps.google.co.uk" target="_blank
If you put in to the search line: 'Coldmoorholme Lane, Bourne End, Bucks' that will get the appropriate map on screen. You then navigate north-south-east-west with one tool, and zoom-in and -out with another. It's simple to use. The mode to be in is 'satellite' not 'map' or 'terrain'.
But first you might want to follow this narrative to see if you're interested...
Enid lived from 1929 to 1938 in a house called Old Thatch, which is on Coldmoorholme Lane just north of a kink about a third of the way up the Lane from the river. It's beside a big pub called The Spade Oak. If you put either of these addresses into the search then an arrow will point them out.
In the first Mystery, the 'burning cottage' to the west of Peterswood is an outhouse at Mr Hick's cottage, on Haycock Lane. This is effectively the house that Dick Hughes lived in in the garden of Old Thatch. (To get Hick from Dick Hughes is not hard - place the first letter of name two on all letters except the first of name one!) Beside Mr Hick's house there is a hotel and it is here that Fatty lives with his parents in the first book. I hope you are with me so far.
For the ensuing Mysteries it didn't make sense for the Trottevilles to be living in temporary accomadation, so Enid moved them to White House in Peterswood, 'not far from' the houses of the Hiltons and the Daykins. Any clues as to where that was? Well, yes, there are.
First, I should say that when Enid was writing the Mysteries, from 1943 to 1961, she lived three miles north of Bourne End, in the house called Green Hedges which is in the town of Beaconsfied. She may either have revisited the village for the odd afternoon to jog her mental map or relied on her memories from the 1929 to 1938 stay.
In the very first Enid Blyton Society Journal David Cook argued convincingly that Peterwood was Bourne End. In a subsequent issue, Andrew Carswell wrote a follow up article which included a map of Bourne End which had been updated to 1920. Bourne End is much expanded today and it is useful to see the relatively small patches of development back in roughly the time that Enid would have known the place.
In fact, Enid would have been quite isolated at Old Thatch on Coldmoorholme Lane. Perhaps she could have walked over the field to the east, towards the centre of the village. This leads to the residential development 'The Abbey'. But there are a lot of water features here, it's very exclusive, and it doesn't tally with the Mysteries, I don't think. She could also have walked to the open countryside to the west of Old Thatch ("hello Enchanted Wood; greetings Magic Faraway Tree"). Otherwise she would be walking south down Coldmoorholme lane to the river, and we know that the Find-Outers lived some distance from the river though they often walked to it and along it. Or Enid could have walked north to Marlow Road. There is a patch of development on Marlow Road (turn right at the top of Coldmoorholme Lane) and it's this patch I want to focus on in a minute.
During my quick visit to Bourne End, I only had one Mystery with me. 'The Mystery of the Missing Man'. This is the one where Eunice is staying at the Trotteville house, so Fatty does a lot of sneaking from house to shed and from village to shed. So here is how I got on with that...
Chapter three: Fatty has returned home from the Hiltons house. Enid writes that 'he circled his house and garden, and went in at the little gate that led out from the very bottom of the garden into the lane'.
Chapter four: Fatty wants to get away from Eunice. Enid writes: 'He ran to the post[box], and then circled the house and garden til he came to the little gate again at the very bottom.'
Just a couple more examples before I explain what's of interest here. Chapter five: Fatty has been in his shed with his tramp disguise on. In order to escape Goon he runs right through the garden and out the front gate and down the road. Goon follows but by the time he gets to the first corner, Fatty has disappeared. 'He had run into the garden of the house there, gone right down to the bottom, leapt over the wall and made his way back once more to the little lane right at the bottom of his own garden.'
Finally, Chapter 13: Fatty is returning home from the middle of the village. Enid writes: 'Fatty leapt off the bus as soon as it stopped and made his way to the lane at the back of his garden. He slipped in through the little gate there and went cautiously to the nearby shed.'
There is more of this kind of thing. As a reader you half-skip it, content with a vague picture of what's going on. But Enid returns to her mental map almost compulsively. This stuff matters to her.
OK so what about this little lane at the back of Fatty's house? The 1920 map of Bourne End shows a footpath running parallel to Marlow Road and one house block north of it. It goes all the way to the village centre, but in 1920 most of it would have been unenclosed. However in that section between Abbey Road and Wendover Road it would likely have been enclosed. That is, as now, a narrow way for pedestrians with wooden fencing on either side. If you zoom in on the Google Earth page, you can clearly see the lane as it passes behind five houses in a row between these two roads. Three of the houses are newish. Which leaves two houses as possibilities for Fatty's residence (blast! - I forgot to note their names). I'm imagining Enid walking up Coldmoorholme Lane and being fascinated by the narrow lane that runs behind the big houses. Are you following me?
What else does The Mystery of the Missing Man tell us? It takes Fatty seven minutes to walk from his house to the Town Hall where the beetle event takes place. Well, it took me about that long to walk from the two houses on Marlow Road along the lane to where the library and the community centre now stand.
More? Fatty goes jogging along the river several times. I see him accessing the river via Coldmoorholme Lane, giving a little nod to the former home of his creator as he passes Old Thatch. Barker's Field plays an important part in the plot, this is clearly to the west of Peterswood. Eunice discovers Fatty locked up in a caravan. She returns to the river and intends to turn towards Peterswood, but she gets her directions wrong and walks along the long, long river-path to Marlow. You can do the same using the Google Earth facility!
Thus endeth the geography lesson!
Well, no, not at all. I haven't had a chance to see if what is said in this Mystery is consistent with what Enid comes up with in the other books in the series. In The Mystery of Holly Lane, there is a detailed (but not detailed enough) description of the journey from Peterswood station to Fatty's house. Bourne End station is slightly to the south and east of the centre of the village, about ten minutes walk from the houses on Marlow Road that I mention above. I'm not at all sure that the journey from the station can be reconciled to the directions Enid gives in this book.
I do wonder if Enid visited Bourne End to top up and perhaps vary her mental map for each story. When she was writing the Famous Five books, she visited Swanage each year. And, as I argue in Looking For Enid, her movements - where she stayed and so on - fed into the stories, demonstrably so in the case of the last few books in that series.
It would also be fun to trace the Hiltons and the Daykins house. A place to start looking might be in the block of development marked on the 1920 map above the junction of Elm Road and Marlow Road. I don't have time to do this right now, especially due to my sub-Arctic location. Perhaps this post will set the ball rolling. I hope so.
Why does this matter? It is great to be in Bourne End where we know Enid lived for a big and vital part of her adult life. It is wonderful - a return to innocence - to feel one is walking the streets in her footsteps and in the footsteps of her creations, the Find-Outers. The more specific knowledge we have about these movements, the closer we get to her creative process. That's the really rewarding thing. You can get there just from reading the books, possibly. But this is another way and might suit the way some people's minds work.
Crikey! - this is a very long post. Sorry about that. Hope it's of interest to some new-age Find-Outers.
Duncan
http://maps.google.co.uk" target="_blank
If you put in to the search line: 'Coldmoorholme Lane, Bourne End, Bucks' that will get the appropriate map on screen. You then navigate north-south-east-west with one tool, and zoom-in and -out with another. It's simple to use. The mode to be in is 'satellite' not 'map' or 'terrain'.
But first you might want to follow this narrative to see if you're interested...
Enid lived from 1929 to 1938 in a house called Old Thatch, which is on Coldmoorholme Lane just north of a kink about a third of the way up the Lane from the river. It's beside a big pub called The Spade Oak. If you put either of these addresses into the search then an arrow will point them out.
In the first Mystery, the 'burning cottage' to the west of Peterswood is an outhouse at Mr Hick's cottage, on Haycock Lane. This is effectively the house that Dick Hughes lived in in the garden of Old Thatch. (To get Hick from Dick Hughes is not hard - place the first letter of name two on all letters except the first of name one!) Beside Mr Hick's house there is a hotel and it is here that Fatty lives with his parents in the first book. I hope you are with me so far.
For the ensuing Mysteries it didn't make sense for the Trottevilles to be living in temporary accomadation, so Enid moved them to White House in Peterswood, 'not far from' the houses of the Hiltons and the Daykins. Any clues as to where that was? Well, yes, there are.
First, I should say that when Enid was writing the Mysteries, from 1943 to 1961, she lived three miles north of Bourne End, in the house called Green Hedges which is in the town of Beaconsfied. She may either have revisited the village for the odd afternoon to jog her mental map or relied on her memories from the 1929 to 1938 stay.
In the very first Enid Blyton Society Journal David Cook argued convincingly that Peterwood was Bourne End. In a subsequent issue, Andrew Carswell wrote a follow up article which included a map of Bourne End which had been updated to 1920. Bourne End is much expanded today and it is useful to see the relatively small patches of development back in roughly the time that Enid would have known the place.
In fact, Enid would have been quite isolated at Old Thatch on Coldmoorholme Lane. Perhaps she could have walked over the field to the east, towards the centre of the village. This leads to the residential development 'The Abbey'. But there are a lot of water features here, it's very exclusive, and it doesn't tally with the Mysteries, I don't think. She could also have walked to the open countryside to the west of Old Thatch ("hello Enchanted Wood; greetings Magic Faraway Tree"). Otherwise she would be walking south down Coldmoorholme lane to the river, and we know that the Find-Outers lived some distance from the river though they often walked to it and along it. Or Enid could have walked north to Marlow Road. There is a patch of development on Marlow Road (turn right at the top of Coldmoorholme Lane) and it's this patch I want to focus on in a minute.
During my quick visit to Bourne End, I only had one Mystery with me. 'The Mystery of the Missing Man'. This is the one where Eunice is staying at the Trotteville house, so Fatty does a lot of sneaking from house to shed and from village to shed. So here is how I got on with that...
Chapter three: Fatty has returned home from the Hiltons house. Enid writes that 'he circled his house and garden, and went in at the little gate that led out from the very bottom of the garden into the lane'.
Chapter four: Fatty wants to get away from Eunice. Enid writes: 'He ran to the post[box], and then circled the house and garden til he came to the little gate again at the very bottom.'
Just a couple more examples before I explain what's of interest here. Chapter five: Fatty has been in his shed with his tramp disguise on. In order to escape Goon he runs right through the garden and out the front gate and down the road. Goon follows but by the time he gets to the first corner, Fatty has disappeared. 'He had run into the garden of the house there, gone right down to the bottom, leapt over the wall and made his way back once more to the little lane right at the bottom of his own garden.'
Finally, Chapter 13: Fatty is returning home from the middle of the village. Enid writes: 'Fatty leapt off the bus as soon as it stopped and made his way to the lane at the back of his garden. He slipped in through the little gate there and went cautiously to the nearby shed.'
There is more of this kind of thing. As a reader you half-skip it, content with a vague picture of what's going on. But Enid returns to her mental map almost compulsively. This stuff matters to her.
OK so what about this little lane at the back of Fatty's house? The 1920 map of Bourne End shows a footpath running parallel to Marlow Road and one house block north of it. It goes all the way to the village centre, but in 1920 most of it would have been unenclosed. However in that section between Abbey Road and Wendover Road it would likely have been enclosed. That is, as now, a narrow way for pedestrians with wooden fencing on either side. If you zoom in on the Google Earth page, you can clearly see the lane as it passes behind five houses in a row between these two roads. Three of the houses are newish. Which leaves two houses as possibilities for Fatty's residence (blast! - I forgot to note their names). I'm imagining Enid walking up Coldmoorholme Lane and being fascinated by the narrow lane that runs behind the big houses. Are you following me?
What else does The Mystery of the Missing Man tell us? It takes Fatty seven minutes to walk from his house to the Town Hall where the beetle event takes place. Well, it took me about that long to walk from the two houses on Marlow Road along the lane to where the library and the community centre now stand.
More? Fatty goes jogging along the river several times. I see him accessing the river via Coldmoorholme Lane, giving a little nod to the former home of his creator as he passes Old Thatch. Barker's Field plays an important part in the plot, this is clearly to the west of Peterswood. Eunice discovers Fatty locked up in a caravan. She returns to the river and intends to turn towards Peterswood, but she gets her directions wrong and walks along the long, long river-path to Marlow. You can do the same using the Google Earth facility!
Thus endeth the geography lesson!
Well, no, not at all. I haven't had a chance to see if what is said in this Mystery is consistent with what Enid comes up with in the other books in the series. In The Mystery of Holly Lane, there is a detailed (but not detailed enough) description of the journey from Peterswood station to Fatty's house. Bourne End station is slightly to the south and east of the centre of the village, about ten minutes walk from the houses on Marlow Road that I mention above. I'm not at all sure that the journey from the station can be reconciled to the directions Enid gives in this book.
I do wonder if Enid visited Bourne End to top up and perhaps vary her mental map for each story. When she was writing the Famous Five books, she visited Swanage each year. And, as I argue in Looking For Enid, her movements - where she stayed and so on - fed into the stories, demonstrably so in the case of the last few books in that series.
It would also be fun to trace the Hiltons and the Daykins house. A place to start looking might be in the block of development marked on the 1920 map above the junction of Elm Road and Marlow Road. I don't have time to do this right now, especially due to my sub-Arctic location. Perhaps this post will set the ball rolling. I hope so.
Why does this matter? It is great to be in Bourne End where we know Enid lived for a big and vital part of her adult life. It is wonderful - a return to innocence - to feel one is walking the streets in her footsteps and in the footsteps of her creations, the Find-Outers. The more specific knowledge we have about these movements, the closer we get to her creative process. That's the really rewarding thing. You can get there just from reading the books, possibly. But this is another way and might suit the way some people's minds work.
Crikey! - this is a very long post. Sorry about that. Hope it's of interest to some new-age Find-Outers.
Duncan