Construction
Wallace was living in Barking in 1871, but did not like the area. He leased 4 acres (16,000 m2) of land in Grays that included an old chalk pit. He decided to build a house on this land to his own specification. There was a nearby cement works and a supply of gravel on the site, so he chose to build the house in concrete. He employed Thomas Wonnacott of Farnham as his architect because he had experience in this new material. The grounds were laid out by Wallace himself. They included a serpentine drive from the road now known as Dell Road, (College Avenue did not exist when the house was built). He described the grounds as "a bit of a wilderness that can be made into a splendid imitation of a Welsh valley". Wallace earned the money to pay for the Dell from the natural history collections he made while in south-east Asia.
Read more about this topic: The Dell (Thurrock)
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“Striving toward a goal puts a more pleasing construction on our advance toward death.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”
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“There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)