Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
BLYTON’S ELFIN HOME’S A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY
HOMELESS HARRY’S MULTIMILLION PLOT
Famous 1950s children’s author Enid Blyton has been criticised in recent times for writing naïve stories, but it hasn’t stopped her books selling 600 million copies so far, most of which are still in print today.
Originally trained as a teacher, Blyton at first began writing poems and then books which went on to achieve huge success, including both her Secret Seven and Famous Five series and, most prominently, the Noddy and Big-Ears titles.
Despite her success, Blyton never strayed too far from her childhood neighbourhood of Beckenham, now a Kentish suburban outpost of London.
Follies are a largely British phenomenon and examples of these beautiful but often pointless edifices are still to be found, usually in rural settings.
Hadlow Tower, lays claim to being the tallest in the world. Until recently, it was approaching dereliction. Six feet taller than Nelson’s Column and in a landscaped river valley, the tower was built by a local merchant family during the mid-19th century, and was an addition to an existing castle.
Several myths are attributed to the property. These include one yarn that it was built by a disgruntled husband to spy on his estranged wife who had run off with a neighbour. After completing her teacher training, she returned to the area to settle. The house she bought with husband Hugh after they were married in 1926, is for sale, complete with a blue plaque commemorating her connection to the property. Named Elfin Cottage by Blyton, it was a newbuild which she admired for its “handsome greyishyellow bricks, bluepainted front door and shuttered windows”.
The shutters are gone, as is the knocker that Blyton said must be “used in a special way; children are expected to knock four times, adults twice and the Little Folk from the Woods, seven”.
Her former home, which has four bedrooms and needs sprucing up, is for sale at £1m with agent Charles Eden (020 8663 1964). There aren’t many homeless people who have inspired a Hollywood film, but Harry Hallowes has.
In 2007 he won a dramatic court battle to claim squatters’ rights to a small patch of land on the edge of Hampstead Heath in north London.
His lawyers argued successfully that because Harry had lived on the land for more than 12 years he had acquired squatters rights to the wooded 7,000 sq ft site and the ramshackle brick lean-to within it, and that he therefore owned it.