Kenwood: external and internal architecture, part 4 - north-west side.

Continuing round the house, the drawing room or main lounge. An internal doorway connects this room with the dining room, as per pic number 2. (Or at least did - bearing Joe's video in mind). As we've seen, in 2006 this room was still remarkably similar to the John-era. However, a couple of points - first, I had thought that the north-west end of Kenwood was externally the same as 45 years ago. Inevitably, this is not so. Look at the last pic - it's hard to find a John-era shot of this side of the house where the west facing sitting or "small" room window can be seen. You can see it in this one, though, and it has clearly been moved in the intervening years. Does that mean the sitting room was bigger in the '60's? Hard to say, though I'd guess not. It was probably done for the same reason that the position of the swimming pool was altered, ie someone just liked it better that way. Secondly, there is a door in the drawing room/lounge leading to the outside terrace - hard to spot in the internal photos, but it is clearly there. Gripping stuff, yet again. Cough, splutter. Possible soilage.

Kenwood: external and internal architecture, part 3 - more attic.

It's only when you view Kenwood from above that you get an idea of how it all fits together - it really is a very eccentric building. Back to the attic, and the odd double apex design that forms the roof, here highlighted at the northern and southern ends from the sides and above. Pauline Lennon's description of this upper area as it was when she lived there in 1967 is worth recalling at this point: "I was quickly installed in the attic suite. It consisted of a bedroom with wash handbasin opening into a small sitting room. Up here also was a large music room containing John's recording equipment where, to my amazement, several of the Beatles' much prized gold discs were strewn carelessly around as if forgotten. The music room also housed a huge collection of records. Additionally stored in the attic regions were a vast quantity of John's discarded clothes. Finally, the roof space itself housed the ubiquitous kittens which periodically emerged to run wild through the house soiling the top quality carpeting with 'little accidents'".

Kenwood: internal and external architecture, part 2 - attic area.

The first photo shows the windows on the landing beneath the attic where the famous shots of John and Julian on the rocking horse were taken. The distinctive shape of the window to John's left is quite evident once you've spotted it - and you can see a bit of the external drainpipe in the rocking horse pics too. It's useful to have that one pinned down, as it means it's now possible to analyse the internal section of Joe's video a bit more - I'll get on to that at a later date, at yawnsome length. Next is the west end, where two attic windows can be seen. As far as I know, there aren't any photos of John next to these, so the inset pic shows the internal view from Joe's video in 2008. Finally, the front of the house. The photos of John in his studio show no windows on that wall - I wonder if the ones evident here were later additions. Anyway, this all helps make some sense of the attic - though it remains unclear exactly how the space was laid out in the Lennon-era. I'll return to this, inevitably, in a future post. UPDATE: the studio was actually at the southern end of the attic, not where indicated above. See later posts.

Kenwood: internal & external architecture, part 1.

Kenwood, it is fair to say, is not your standard two-up two-down. The layout very much veers towards the eccentric. Add the fact that you have to be in the super-rich bracket to afford such a house, which means that renovating the place to the point of lunacy is almost a prerequisite, and the whole thing can become very confusing very quickly. I thought it might be interesting (and I could well be wrong about that) to do some posts attempting to relate the outside to the inside.
Regular readers of this blog will be quite familiar with how Kenwood looks inside and out, but connecting the two is a bit more tricky. So, here is how the sunroom and dining room fit together. There is no internal door connecting the two rooms - you go between them via a small internal hall (or at least did circa 2006). All straightforward enough. However - a new problem has, inevitably, arisen. Note the room above the dining room - this was the master bedroom in 2006, and I had assumed also the master bedroom during the John-era. (There is another window round the other side of the house, which is the one you can see in the internal bedroom pic inset). Note the unusual shape of the external "bedroom" window in the main pic. This window shows that the '68 master bedroom and the '06 master bedroom cannot be the same room. The next post will deal with this latest conundrum in more detail, whether you want it to or not.