24 Chapel Street: internal layout.

As the old (and moving) trad. arr. has it: "Chapel Street, Chapel Street, Hard to walk to, Without any feet" (What is this drivel? - Podiatry Ed.). Number 24 was, o' course, Brian's final abode, a place of psychedelic high-jinks and not a little angst, as the repercussions of Brian's increasingly chaotic private life played themselves out. The plans here date from the late 1950s, and the eagle of eye will spot certain discrepancies (eg there are now 3 windows on the side wall, but only 2 at the time of the plan for the upper floors).
Nevertheless, this is more or less the layout as Brian would have known it. But enuff o' my yakkin'; for the BBC Arena documentary on his life, former PA Joanne Petersen drove back to Chapel Street and ran through the place (not literally) as she remembered it:

JP: "Downstairs was the staff quarters; this was where his housekeeper and her husband lived." ( ie Spanish couple Maria and Antonio, of whom little is so far known):

Joanne had nothing to say about the ground floor, but a small part of the hall (or vestibule thereof) could be glimpsed behind Ver Fabs on the night of the Pepper launch party. Note too the kitchen to the rear, from where Joanne phoned Kingsley Hill on the weekend of Brian's death to express her concerns to Peter Brown:

JP again: "You went upstairs to the sitting room, and behind the sitting room was Brian's study where he worked.":

So the area marked "Boudoir" on the plan was Brian's office, which explains why it is dark in the party photos:

JP: "The second floor was his suite... you went in through the double doors to his dressing room, and then into his bedroom and then through there into his bathroom. His bathroom was pretty unique. It was totally white... with a huge (photo of) El Cordobes all on one wall, it was very imposing."
El Cordobes was, as ye will doubtless know, a Spanish bullfighter who Brian had a "thang" about.  From the description, it's possible that the door to the bathroom on the plan here was blocked off, and another put in beside the chimney area in Bedroom 1. Said Bedroom 1 was, o' course, the place where, tragically, on 27th August 1967, Brian accepted a teaching post in Australia:

JP: "The rest of the top floor was two rooms knocked into one, and that was where I worked in one corner. It was the office by day and the playroom by night. It was where he had all his memorabilia, and the present that Elvis's Col. Tom Parker had given him. It was just full of treasures of Brian's. It was also where everybody went up at night to play, and at the weekend I used to put my typewriter under my desk because then it wasn't lost anymore."
Presumably the "two rooms knocked into one" were Bedrooms 4 and 5:

And there we have it. I haven't found any record of planning permission post-Brian, so presumably the house remains more or less the same. One day, no doubt, it will come on the market again, at which point we shall see.
Many thanks to Julian Carr for digging up (not literally) the plans, and grateful acknowledgement to James Boyles for taking the Chapel Street pic.

Whaddon House, SW1: Flat 15.

Whaddon House, on Williams Mews, London SW1, saw Fabs related goings and comings during the peak mania era; Ringo and George both lived here in '64 and early '65, variously in flats 5, 6 and 7. This was mainly because Eppy had already moved in circa late 1963, occupying the top floor flat number 15, and it is this, dearly beloved, with which we occupy us-selves today.
Above, Brian in morning dress, apparently off to Ascot, no doubt to lose (or even win) an enormous sum on the fillies. Taken on the balcony immediately outside the living room, note the tiling intact to this day:

A Bri-eye view:

Heading in to the living room, and this pic of John captures a corner likewise more or less unchanged:

As for the rest of the room, doing that auld "then unt nau" raises the head of dread renovation once again. Note the appearance of doors in the other corner, where previously there were none:

This pic of ver Fabs with Lonnie Trimble, Brian's housekeeper, gives a wider view of the same spot. The modern doors lead to the kitchen. It seems that at some point the living room has been widened out, not to mention, in common with much modern renovation, blanded out, with various quirks removed in order to leave a bigger and more symmetrically shaped room.
I'd guess the door visible here in the Trimble pic would have been the original kitchen entrance (with the kitchen at that point being of a larger size); renovation has seen a whole section of wall (and kitchen) removed to create more floor-space in the living room, with the new kitchen entrance knocked through in that far corner:

Something similar has occurred in the other corner of the room; note the jutting out bit of wall and double-doors in the Eppy pic. Again, that section of wall has been removed and a single door installed, for the same reasons as above - in order to create more living room floor space:

Les Fabs in pretty much the same spot:

Lastly, some other modern shots of the flat: kitchen, hall, bedroom and en-suite:

If I don't get round to posting anything else this year, might I take the opportunity to wish regulah perusers of this rubbish all gratings of the season, and a happier New Year too. Might I? I just might.

Kenwood: August 28th, 1967.

Serenity Now! On the afternoon of August 28th, 1967, a very stunned (albeit serene) John and Ringo gathered with Ray Coleman round the pool at Kenwood to discuss the previous day's events. Pete Shotton had driven up from Hayling Island that morning to lend moral support, but, having found John very serene indeed on his perch, headed off again to tend to matters supermarket.
John, of course, was later to regret the whole Maharishi-led Serenity Now response to Brian's death.
As it sayeth in Seinfeld: Serenity Now - Insanity Later. And so it came to pass that under the influence of Arthur "Insanity Now - Serenity Later" Janov, John, fresh from Primal-ing, resented the way he'd bottled up his real feelings of anger/guilt etc., and characterised the Maharishi as a "f**kin' idiot" in the Wenner Rolling Stone interview.
Though he was later to turn on Janov in similar fashion, if certain accounts are to be believed John stuck with the notion of "squeezin' the real feelin'"(TM), occasionally in ways that might generously be described as "somewhat insensitive", right up until the end of his own life.
Alas, no pics from the day in question, but plenty o' text; download and zoom in to read.

50 Pubs Associated With The Beatles:...

No. 41: The Merrie Harriers, Cowbeech, East Sussex.
The above pic of Brian and Nat Weiss, taken shortly before the former's demise, is generally thought to have been captured outside the pub in the mews behind his house in Chapel Street. This despite the fact that the exterior of that pub (The Horse and Groom) looks nothing like the one featured in the photo. I had thought the explanation must lie with our old friend renovation...but once again, I was mistaken.
Mark Lewisohn has tracked down the actual pub, namely the Merrie Harriers in Sussex, not far from Brian's country retreat Kingsley Hill:


These are Mark's pics of the pub, which he has kindly shared, and you lucky people can take them as a small taster of a forthcoming "pwoject" which will see his extensive Eppy archives shunted onto the web. Watch this space for details (and many thanks to Sir Thomas Titte).

Kingsley Hill: then & now.

Definitive proof that Kingsley Hill was indeed the venue for those evocative shots, showing assorted Beatles and entourage at repose in the summer of 1967. As can be seen, at least some of the images were captured in the garden adjacent to the road.
The house and grounds are virtually unchanged 40-odd years later - the only real difference being some savage topiary on the tree outside the door. The distinctive garden wall is still there too:


Brian bought Kingsley Hill in early 1967 as a country retreat, partly because of its Winston Churchill connections (it's said that the stogied-up PM met with Chiefs of Staff here immediately prior to D-Day).
After Brian's death, his brother Clive sold the abode on to (if not onto) a family (Macfarlane by name); apparently it still contained boxes of Brian's leftover possessions at that point, and these formed part of the sale.
Subsequently sold again in 1976 (and, as far as I know, the current owner has had it since then), Kingsley Hill's interior is seemingly also largely unmodified; several rooms still boast "psychedelic" paintwork on the walls, presumably of Beatle-related origin. (This was a trend in 1967 - Kenwood, Kinfauns, Sunny Heights and Kingsley Hill were all partially so decorated; it's remarkable that in two of these houses, some of that paintwork has survived to the present day.)
It was, of course, also the venue for a famous party in celebration of Sgt Pepper; Brian's secretary, Joanne Peterson, recalls "walking into the top room of the house and opening the door. There were the Beatles, sitting there cross-legged in their Sgt Pepper costumes".
The most famous picture of Brian outside Kingsley Hill was taken on the other side of the low "bungalow" bit of the house, visible to the left:


All in all, a fascinating place. (By the way, it was the subject of a British newspaper article a few years back, which may well have included shots of the interior paintwork described above. If anyone has this, be a "luv" and send us a copy.)

Kingsley Hill: 3.

Well, well... Three shots of contemporary Kingsley Hill! The sundial is still there, and the house looks more or less the same as it did in 1967. This was the scene, on Sunday 28 May of that year, of Brian's dual housewarming/Sgt Pepper celebration. A week after the press party at Chapel Street, and a few days before Pepper's UK release, John, George, Ringo (but not Paul), Derek Taylor, plus wives and you-name-it scenesters descended on Kingsley Hill, the country roads leading there festooned with balloons. John, George and Derek spent a lot of time in the back of the psychedelic Rolls listening to Whiter Shade Of Pale over and over again. Sgt Pepper, naturally, blasted from the main house. Enhanced tea, Lionel Bart as barbed wire...someone must have had a camera. Only two people didn't enjoy it - Brian, still shaky after a spell in the Priory clinic, was upset that Paul hadn't appeared, at least until John and George cheered him up. Cynthia, tripping for the 3rd and final time, was upstairs experiencing what was known as, to use the parlance of the day, a "bummer". Huge thanks to Mark Lewisohn for sharing these (that's him occupying Brian's spot), and might I just urge you to go out and buy his books if you haven't already done so.

Brian Epstein: St George´s Hill.

Returning vaguely to the point of all this, Brian Epstein had his own connection with St George´s Hill. He was going to visit John one day, when walking up the road towards Kenwood he spotted a Platonic chauffeur in the drive of one of the neighbouring houses. John had been having trouble with his chauffeur (Jock by name - I assume he was Scottish; he certainly acted like it), who had been using the Rolls as a "base of operations", which is putting it kindly. Anyway, Brian approached him to ask if he fancied working for John Lennon. This, of course, was Les Anthony, who loyally served until John´s emigration to the United States. The employers of Anthony were none too happy at this turn of events, and when Brian later came and offered to buy their house so as to contribute to John´s communal Beatles ideal (John wasn´t that happy either when Paul elected to live in St John´s Wood), they rejected the proposal in no uncertain terms. Which house was it? I have no idea. But probably one of these - maybe the one nearest to Kenwood.