Kenwood: the front door endures!

Above, the kitchen in '06. This, as "readahs" will know, is a new bit of the house, constructed in the mid-90s. In John's time, there was an odd internal yard in this position, next to the garage overlooking the pool. An almost identical shot has been on here before - but, crucially, that one didn't show the external door. This one does, to the left of the pic...and if that's not the old Lennon-era front door, then it's Dylan caps for dinner tonight:


The current front door is substantially bigger than this one. After (or before) installing it, they must have decided to keep the old front door as well, but transplant it to the new kitchen block. And there it is!
So much of this blog charts the destruction of locale, that it's pleasing to report an unexpected incidence of endurance.
Knockers or no knockers.

Kenwood: June 12, 1965.

John and George, pictured outside the front door at Kenwood, apparently (see comments) on June 12, 1965. This was the day news broke (widely) (again, see comments, if you like) about their being awarded the MBE. Note the naked-lady knocker. Note too George's get-up: the same (sans hat) as the back of Rubber Soul and the UK Help! album (I don't know about the US version - I don't have a copy of it). The photos of John on the rear of both of these were certainly taken at Kenwood, and I wonder (though not very often) if any of the others were too.
Another artefact associated with this date is the warrant sent to Ringo to inform him that he was also being so "honoured", marked the twelfth day of June, 1965:


Obviously, the other three would have received a warrant too, but, as far as I know, Ringo's is the only one to surface so far. John's MBE was recently discovered lurking in the bowels of Buckingham Palace during a spring-clean; there's talk of putting it on display somewhere or other.

Thanks to Simon, and to M.

Kenwood: summer, 1968 - part 1.

(May as well start at the front door.)
Cathy Kelleher Sarver visited Kenwood shortly after John & Yoko had moved out in the summer of 1968, and...well, she can tell you herself:
"It was summer 1968 and John had stopped living at Kenwood but the house was so very special to me, I just had to go there anyway. My friend and I went to the house and rang the doorbell. A lady answered the door. I asked if I could take a picture of inside the door and she let us into the long foyer. Then she opened the door to the living room and I got that picture and then she opened the door to what I call the "music room". Both rooms were about three steps down from the foyer (the house was built on a hill). In Alf Bicknell's book he talks about helping John paint a room red. This must be the room! Then we went back to the door and I asked if I could take a picture of her and she said, “Yes". After I took the picture of her with the foyer's built-in bookcases in the background she said, "Who are you going to tell your friends I am?”. Neither of us spoke but I was thinking, "The maid?", but didn't want to say that. Then she said, "I'm Cynthia's mother." WOW! It was Mrs. Powell. We thanked her and left the door, which she shut. THEN we went all over the property!!! And no one knew!!! And then we left. We were such good fans we didn't even take a leaf off a tree!!!! At some point in the conversation Mrs. Powell told us Cynthia was at the pool watching Julian and a neighborhood friend. I took a picture through the fence from the back driveway and you can just barely see two little heads in the water!!!!!"


All in all, Cathy took 20 (count 'em) pics that day, and guess wot? They are all going to be on here, over the next few days. First off, the "naked lady" door knocker, together with the Lennon coat of arms. Clearly a hastily snatched pic, I've paired it with the one from the end of the year showing the same thing. Above, the entrance hall (with John's nemesis much in evidence) - and final proof that it was the location for those John-in-the-bathchair shots. Note that the books have all gone, later to appear at Tittenhurst. Funny, that. John didn't care about much of the detritus he'd accumulated at Kenwood, judging by the fact that Cynthia took most of it, uncontested. But he clearly wanted the books. (Musta been a "reader".)


Many thanks go to Cathy for so generously agreeing to let us see her photos and hear her story, and to her good friend, the wonderful Lizzie Bravo, who sorted it all out. Aguardientes all round.