Recollections of a 50's childhood in the Wanstead area.

I spent my childhood in the 50's exploring the wildlife in the Wanstead area, and lived just a hundred or so yards away from Wanstead Flats. I now live on a Nature Reserve in Dorset and being remote from your area I find your website a wonderful resource.

I spent most of my spare time on Wanstead Flats, in Wanstead Park, Bush Wood, the Hollow Ponds, Green Man Pond and the Cat and Dog Pond on Wanstead Flats. And there was that wonderful pond by the Quaker Meeting House. These last two ponds were rich in amphibians. I am sure there were Great Crested Newts about then; I only saw two, but of course thousands of  common newts.

We saw fallow deer in Wanstead Park, Bush Wood and very rarely on Wanstead Flats. The skylarks were very common then and Kestrels were a rare treat. Some friends boasted they saw Sparrow Hawks.

I remember the yearly barrage balloons used by the TA for practice several times a year. There were hundreds of slit trenches, bomb craters and concrete gun emplacements, later used for organised motorbike scrambling meets.

They were wonderful times, made only bearable in my "exile" in Dorset by the fact that we have two species of deer, badgers, foxes, buzzards, peregrines, hobbies and even one merlin, plus the occasional nightjar, wood duck etc. in our own garden.

In trips to the Serengetti Plain I always commented that it was like Wanstead Flats - but the feeling there is exactly the same.