psmv6: Wellingtonia 136

After something of a pause, two Wellingtonia in as many days. This one in the margins of a digression to check up on the current status of the Wells Community Centre - which, incidentally, after various vicissitudes and plans, seems to be up and running again. Perhaps with volunteers doing the grunt work, and with the council retaining the site.

The Wellingtonia was in the grounds of what looked as if it had once been a large, red brick house, perhaps late 19th or early 20th century. Some kind of a school, which I have now been reminded is the Skylarks school of reference 5.

What is now the Wells estate, was a circular patch of land, with the original Epsom Well, from Epsom's days as a 17th century spa-town (larger evidence of which being the Assembly Rooms in town centre, now Wetherspoon's), at its centre. Presumably the ownership of this circular patch of land, seemingly carved out of what is now common land - Epsom Common and Ashtead Common, has a complicated history.

What look like allotments, some of them complete with cottages, outside the magic circle, bottom right.

By 1912, the farm - which according to reference 2 had struggled for a while - has gone and Wells House has arrived. Just the sort of place you would expect to find a Wellingtonia and the rectangular block adjacent to the Epsom-Ashtead road has been housed over.

By the 1940s what is now the Wells estate is well underway, although the big house and its park survive in the middle. Newton Wood to the left is still there today and is in private hands, not part of the common. Mostly fairly young trees as I recall, but it is a while since I have been there - having been put off years ago by the running of cows on Epsom Common and the depredations of the Chain Saw Volunteers. Not content to more or less leave well alone. A selection of my comments thereon is to be found at reference 7.

Don't know when this one was surveyed, but it looks as if the present estate was all there by the 1960s, with the mental hospitals, now housing estates, to the north.

The start of the Copilot effort, unchecked, but consistent with the maps above.

Most of the Gemini effort. So the first owner of the house was one James Stuart Strange, last Lord of the Manor. A notable Jacobite family in its time, fighting on the wrong side at Culloden, although his father was a perfectly respectable admiral on the right side.

Some corroboration in the snap which follows, a record which predates the arrival of AI.

All that remains to be done is to check the children's home side of things. 'Karibu' does not sound like a likely name from the 1950s.

Snap turned up by Bing.

Gemini's summary of his story about Wells House after Strange. A story which included the comment:

'...By the early 2000s, the original Victorian structure of Wells House was increasingly seen as "not fit for purpose" for modern residential care. It was a large, high-maintenance building that didn't provide the the domestic, "family-style" environment modern standards required....'.

Given the location of the Wellingtonia, more or less on the back lawn of Wells House, my guess is that it was planted at the beginning of Gemini's first cycle, when the gardens for the then new house would have been laid out, and so would be getting on for 140 years old now.

All in all, a reasonable amount of corroboration of the AI on this occasion. Although one wonders how many children - and others - with special needs get 'the domestic, family-style environment [that] modern standards require'. I associate today to the Shirley Oaks of reference 8.

PS: more corroboration to be found at references 9 and 10. The Stranges did quite well for themselves, considering that their ancestor was a rebellious arty type from the very far north. Bing turns up the sample above, wrongly attributed to the martyrdom of St Agnes, when actually it is the suicide of Dido of Carthage, after being dumped by Aeneas. Here seen lying on her own funeral pyre in modern dress. See references 11 and 12.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/wellingtonia-135.html.

Reference 2: https://historyofpublicspace.uk/2018/07/08/work-in-progress-wells-estate-epsom-surrey/. Someone else who is into maps.

Reference 3: https://eehe.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/EpsomCommonCottages1896.pdf. A different version of the snaps above.

Reference 4: https://bernardgordon.co.uk/properties/let-former-childrens-home-now-sen-school-epsom-kt18. Wells House to let.

Reference 5: https://www.ashleyparkschool.co.uk/contact/. The current occupant of what was Wells House. Skylarks: a school for older autistics.

Reference 6: https://www.optionsautism.co.uk/about-us/our-family/. The parent organisation.

Reference 7: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=chain+volunteers.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2026/01/shirley-oaks.html.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Strange_(engraver).

Reference 10: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Strange,_Robert.

Reference 11: https://www.grosvenorprints.com/stock.php?engraver=Strange.