where Henry Grace was the local GP. Downend is near Mangotsfield and, although it is now a suburb of Bristol, it was then "a distinct village surrounded by countryside" and about four miles from Bristol. Henry and Martha Grace had nine children in all: "the same number as Victoria and Albert – and in every respect they were the typical Victorian family". Grace was the eighth child in the family; he had three older brothers, including E. M. Grace (always known as "E. M."), and four older sisters. The ninth child was his younger brother Fred Grace, born in 1850. Grace began his Cricketing Reminiscences (1899) by answering a question he had frequently been asked: i.e., was he "born a cricketer"? His answer was in the negative because he believed that "cricketers are made by coaching and practice", though he adds that if he was not born a cricketer, he was born "in the atmosphere of cricket". His father and mother were "full of enthusiasm for the game" and it was "a common theme of conversation at home". In 1850, when W. G. was two and Fred was expected, the family moved to a nearby house called "The Chesnuts" which had a sizeable orchard and Henry Grace organised clearance of this to establish a practice pitch. All nine children in the Grace family, including the four daughters, were encouraged to play cricket although the girls, along with the dogs, were required for fielding only. Grace claimed that he first handled a cricket bat at the age of two. It was in the Downend orchard and as members of their local cricket clubs that he and his brothers developed their skills, mainly under the tutelage of his uncle, Alfred Pocock, who was an exceptional coach. Apart from his cricket and his schooling, Grace lived the life of a country boy and roamed freely with the other village boys. One of his regular activities was stone throwing at birds in the fields and he later claimed that this was the source of his eventual skill as an outfielder. Education Grace was "notoriously unscholarly". His first schooling was with a Miss Trotman in Downend village and then with a Mr Curtis of Winterbourne. He subsequently attended a day school called Ridgway House, run by a Mr Malpas, until he was fourteen. One of his schoolmasters, David Bernard, later married Grace's sister Alice. In