In May 1894, when Ned was five, the Lawrence family moved to Langley Lodge, an isolated house on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire. Here they stayed for the next three summers.
It was while living at Langley Lodge (the house no longer stands today) that the boys befriended the children of a neighbouring family, the Lauries, leading many years later to a most remarkable episode in Lawrence’s life. It was one of these children, Janet, who later claimed that Lawrence had proposed to her, when he was about twenty-one years old, while she was visiting the family in Oxford.
She did not take him seriously; it was his brother Will that she was interested in. It was not to be. Will would be killed in the war in 1915.
In the autumn of 1896, with Bob now ten and Ned eight, the question arose as to the boys’ schooling. Once again, the family prepared to move, but this time it would be to put down roots in the historic city that would so inspire Lawrence’s future interests and put him on his path in life: Oxford.