Broadstairs. The following summer, The Times reported that Prince John would not attend Broadstairs the following term, and that his parents had not decided whether to send him to school at all. After the outbreak of World War I, he rarely saw his parents, who were often away on official duties, and his siblings, who were either at boarding school or in the military. He slowly disappeared from the public eye and no official portraits of him were commissioned after 1913. In spite of his physical and mental decline, he was not removed from the line of succession. Wood Farm In 1916, as his seizures became more frequent and severe, John was sent to live at Wood Farm, with "Lala" Bill having charge of his care. Though he maintained an interest in the world around him and was capable of coherent thought and expression, with his lack of educational progress, the last of his tutors was dismissed and his formal education ended. Physicians warned that he would likely not reach adulthood. At Wood Farm, John became "a satellite with his own little household on an outlying farm on the Sandringham estate... Guests at Balmoral remember him during the Great War as tall and muscular, but always a distant figure glimpsed from afar in the woods, escorted by his own retainers." His grandmother Queen Alexandra maintained a garden at Sandringham House especially for him, and this became "one of the great pleasures of [Prince John]'s life." After the summer of 1916, John was rarely seen outside the Sandringham Estate and passed solely into "Lala" Bill's care. After Queen Alexandra wrote that "[Prince John] is very proud of his house but is longing for a companion," Queen Mary broke from royal practice by having local children brought in to be playmates for Prince John. One of these was Winifred Thomas, a young girl from Halifax who had been sent to live with her aunt and uncle (who had charge of the royal stables at Sandringham) in hopes her asthma would improve. Prince John had known Winifred years earlier, prior to the outbreak of World War I. Now they became close, taking nature walks together and working in Queen Alexandra's garden. Prince John also played with his elder siblings when they visited: once, when his two eldest brothers came to visit, the Prince of Wales "took him for a run in a kind