Besant moved from Portsmouth? to London (at age ?) to study at Stockwell Grammar School.
[p.61]
There were many curious and pleasant places within reach of Stockwell. Clapham Common, on the south, the first of the Surrey heaths. It was surrounded by stately mansions, sacred to the memory of Wilberforce, Thornton, and Macaulay, standing amidst broad lawns with splendid cedars. The common itself was left absolutely untouched; winter water-ways made little ravines; there were ponds, there were no roads, there was gorse and fern. It was our playground.
Beyond lay Wandsworth Common, another wild heath with a lake called the Black Sea, wherein, it was rumoured, gigantic pike attacked and bit great holes in the boy who ventured to swim across.
On the west one could easily reach the Battersea Fields. As I recollect this place, it was most dreary and miserable; a broad flat, lower than the river, and protected by an embankment. On the bank stood the once famous Red House tavern, now long forgotten, and beside it the pigeon-shooting ground. This sport went on continually. If a pigeon escaped he was potted by men who carried guns and lay waiting for him outside the grounds. Battersea Church was on the wall of the Fields, the transformation of a great part of which into Battersea Park took place between 1851 and 1858.
In summer our favourite rambles were farther afield, in the direction of Champion Hill, Herne Hill, Dulwich, and even Penge. No one visiting these places at the present day can understand their loveliness before they were built over. Dulwich, with its ancient college and its inn, its greenery and its orchards, was surely the sweetest village in the world. I always looked about in case I might come upon Mr. Pickwick, who was then a resident, but I was never privileged to see him. The hanging woods of Penge in autumn were lovely beyond the power of words. Its Common on the Hill had been enclosed long before in 1824. Howe laments the fact in that year; but in the fifties Penge, Norwood and Sydenham formed a group of suburbs still rural, still covered with woods and gardens, and as beautiful as any country village.
As yet there were neither omnibuses nor railway. The people who went into the City drove in their own carriages or rode their own horses. Any morning along the Clapham Road there were still many who rode into town.
We were not great at games at the school. There was a cricket club, but my short sight disqualified me from any game of ball; in the winter there was hockey on Clapham Common. I think that football had not yet come in; in fact athletics, in such schools as this was, hardly existed. On the other hand we took long walks; we walked to Richmond, and rode ponies in the Park; we walked to Putney, and took boats on the River; we jumped the Effra, in the Dulwich Fields; we had a gymnastic bar and did things of strength; sometimes we wrestled; sometimes we fought. On the whole it was a healthy kind of life, with plenty of outdoor exercise.
For my own part, I had a form of recreation all my own, of which I said nothing, because the other boys would not understand it. I had friends at Camberwell and Brixton, who asked me two or three times a term to dinner on a half-holiday. On such occasions I used to get away at two and walk all the way into the City of London, which was to me then, as it has been ever since, a place of mystery, full of things to be discovered. Nothing could be more delightful than to wander about, not knowing where, so long as one was in the City.
[Source: Autobiography of Sir Walter Besant, Hutchinson & co., 1902.
Various formats available at here. Downloaded and saved as e.g. "BESANT_AUTOBIOGRAPHY_OF_SIR_WALTER_BESANT_autobiographysi01besagoog.pdf". Also a text version (partly edited).]