📍Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, UK
1935 – 1950“Julie Andrews was born Julia Wells in 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, a Surrey village on a bend of the Thames, and she wrote lovingly about its river, meadows and gardens in her memoir Home. Her father, Ted Wells, was a gentle schoolteacher who taught woodwork and metalwork and loved nature; her mother, Barbara, was a pianist. When Julia was young her parents divorced, and her mother married Ted Andrews, a Canadian-born tenor, with whom she performed in variety shows. Julia took her stepfather's surname. Her childhood was not easy. The war divided the family, and home life with her mother and stepfather was often difficult, as she later wrote with honesty and compassion. But her stepfather noticed something extraordinary: a clear, strong soprano voice with a range of nearly four octaves. He insisted she have singing lessons, and she studied with the soprano Lilian Stiles-Allen, who shaped her technique. Her father, meanwhile, gave her a love of the countryside and of reading that she never lost, and Walton remained the landscape she associated with peace. She began performing in her parents' act as a child, and at twelve she made her solo professional debut in the revue Starlight Roof at the London Hippodrome, singing a difficult operatic aria. She went on to Broadway in The Boy Friend and My Fair Lady, then to Mary Poppins, which won her an Academy Award, and The Sound of Music. She has also written many children's books with her daughter. In Home, she describes how the music and the countryside of her Surrey childhood gave her strength and joy through difficult years.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today