I went back. People do. It's a primaeval instinct.
My walk to school was short. I lived in a small world. Out of my back door, through the back garden of my grandparents who lived next door, and along their side path which emerged here. The scene hasn't changed much if you get the camera angle right. A wider viewpoint would reveal many changes.
I walked alongside this wall which was the frontage of an impressive and handsome house originally built for the curate of the parish in the days when everybody went to church and the openings for clergymen were plentiful. At the end of the wall the road widened out where the local worthies had built the school in 1856 with a school house for the teacher adjoining.
This was the tail end of the England defined by the Victorian period. You learned your lessons in the same room as your father and his father before him had learned their lessons. The walls and windows were unchanged; the pine floorboards were painted black and splintered easily.
You somehow knew it was historic, yet the past rested lightly on young shoulders. Only with the passage of time does the weight grow heavier.