Walnut Tree Cottage

This is Walnut Tree Cottage, 350 years old, in the village of Thorpe, Surrey, England, where my husband, children, and I lived for fourteen of the eighteen years we lived in England. At that time, this was the Headmaster's residence (my husband was the Headmaster) for the TASIS school, I taught upper school English there, and our two children attended the school.

The second-story middle window opens into the room in which I wrote Walk Two Moons, The Wanderer, Absolutely Normal Chaos, Pleasing the Ghost, Chasing Redbird, Fishing in the Air, and Bloomability.


Nearly everyone who entered this cottage said, "How quaint! How cute!", and it was that, but quaint and cute do not necessarily mean easy-to-live-in.  The plumbing was dodgy, the heating sporadic, the kitchen wee, the spiders a-plenty, and each spring plants grew up between the dining-room floorboards and around the windows.

But it was home and we were happy there.