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Dennis Wheatley's Homes

1910 - 1913: 1 Becmead Avenue, London


Becmead Avenue

No. 1 as it is now

No. 1 is on the right; No. 3 is on the left, where Hilda Gosling lived.

Due to his father’s unlucky speculations on the Stock Exchange, he had to sell Wootton Lodge and move into a much smaller home.

As a result, when DW started his first holiday from HMS Worcester, he returned to a new home. In his own words it was 'a modern semi-detached only a stone's throw from Streatham High Street, in a road that led down to Tooting Bec Common'.

'It was a cut above 10 Raleigh Gardens, particularly since, with the coming of motor cars, Brixton was now rapidly going down in the social scale, and better class people were tending to move further away from Central London'

Although in later life he could recall every nook and cranny of Wootton, he had not the faintest memory of the inside of Friars Croft, as the house was named. He commented however that it must have be of a fair size, as in addition to a living-in cook and housemaid, they had a nurse for his young sister Muriel.

One thing it brought him was a new friend; a girl of his own age named Hilda Gosling, who lived next door. She became a quasi-sister to him, and they maintained their friendship right through their lives.

References : ‘The Young Man Said’ pages 140 - 159.