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One of the greatest pleasures in doing this historical work is that longtime puzzles suddenly get solved when you're least expecting it.

For some years I've been convinced there was once a great wall across the Common - in fact, right across the Cricket Pitches. It was hard to be certain from mid-century maps, but they certainly show a clear straight line between the buildings associated with Neal's farm (currently outbuildings next to the Skylark) and Trinity Road. The line was dead straight, and appeared to join a few yards from a this [brick pile]

If you look closely, you can see what might be the base of an identical [brick pile] that might have been the end of the wall.

But why a wall? The entire length of [fence] aroud the RVPA is ironwork on a low brick all, with [brick pillars or piers][ every ? yards.

Contemporaries write about how much more agreeable it was to passers-by to be able to look through an iron [fence] along Trinity Road than be [hemmed in by] a high brick wall.

The whole area had been fenced and walled off when the Patriotic Fund accepted by Earl Spencer's generous offer to sell 50 or so acres of the Common on which the Patriotic Asylum for Girls could be built.

(The Fund had originally only be looking for ? acres, and a maximum of ?). QUOTE. But Spencer's generosity could not be snubbed, so they took the lot.

(John Buckmaster later said it was all very well for Earl Spencer to be charitable but it wasn't his land to sell. But in any case ? acres would have been perfectly suficient.And he wasn't wrong. There was too much land for the girls, so a boys school was added in 1872? (Sold off to Emanuel School in 188?).

There is a suggestio [by? where?] that this land shoule be cultivated, so the schools could be more or less self-sustaining, but this was not prracticable.

Play and team sports were never encouraged, so the intention had never been to provide plenty of sporting facilities on spacious grounds fit for a public school). Did the grils ever play Hockey? Cricket? Tennis? I doubt it I've never seen any references to it. There were two very small Playgrounds marked on large-scale OS maps.

And Bruce Porter is clearly appalled by the ... they had no special fcilities, he says, until the [big square buyilding was set aside for them - presumably for wet-weather play). It was this structure that he used for a variety of recreatuo pursuits, including billiards .

QUOTE

So much of the land was rented off to the nal family as market gardens, stabling for their carriage hire business, and a [yard] for building mateirals

(I have a feeling that i can't completely justify that they also flogged off peat and top soil taken from the area - they certainly sold it, but dod much or all of it come from the surface of the Common? Perhaps someday I will come eventually chance upon further information to confirm or deny this.)

But back to the wall...

A high wall round a girls' asylum/orphanage would not be surprising.

Have a look at these recent aerial photographs, including some curious lines in the grass exactly corresponding to the putative wall...