St George's Hill: part 2 - 19th century v. 1964.

Two maps of the Hill (click on them for a better look). The one on the left dates from the 19th century, when the land was divided into plots; there appear to have been only around 4 houses at that point, and obviously, pre-Tarrant, these would have been nothing like the grand residences of nowadays. The map on the right dates from ca. 1964, the year John moved into Kenwood. It's hard to match one with the other, until you rotate the 19th century one:


Kenwood is situated in the middle of what was plot number 13. It's clear why Old Avenue is so called - it corresponds to the long tree-lined road on the older map. The other item of non-Beatle related interest is how Camp End Road got its name - because there was a Roman Camp in that part of St George's Hill.
(Btw Sunny Heights is on the outer curve of South Road nearest South Ridge, which would put the site somewhere near the edge of the forest on the 19th century rendering.)

St George's Hill: part 1 - Cavendish Road entrance.

Several people have written to ask if it is possible to get into the estate where Kenwood is situated. Unless armed with an invitation, or on business of some kind, then the answer is almost certainly not!
This is the entrance nearest to the house. If you are a resident, or member of the local golf or tennis fraternities, then you have a pass which gets you straight through the security gates. Anyone else has to speak to the guard - and, whilst friendly, they don't tend to look favourably on ambulatory requests, Beatles-related or otherwise...


...which is all plus ca change; St George's Hill's earliest claim to fame rests on the fact that proto-hippies and free the land types the Diggers attempted to establish a commune here in 1649, only to be seen off after a few months of legal to-ing and fro-ing by local landowners. In recent times, there have been concerted efforts to open the Hill up to public access, thus far unsuccessful.
In the 1960s, however, security was more lax; there were no gates at the entrances, and, whilst you might be challenged by local residents, it was quite possible to walk onto the estate - hence the various fan photos of the house.

Kenwood: dining room, 1965.

The location of the 1965 family shots of John, Cynthia and Julian can now be definitively established, thanks to the above, uncropped photograph. Although it's not perfect quality, the two framed pictures can be seen clearly enough to establish the identity of the right hand one; compare with the following, sold at auction in 1996:


In fact, both of the reproductions in the first photo were sold by Cynthia in the same auction as a job lot. They are in the style of Basilus Besler, and, obviously, have a botanical theme. Here's a closer look at the visible portion in comparison - clearly the same picture:


We can pinpoint this as the dining room thanks to the note from Cynthia which accompanied the lot, stating that the pictures (which are actually colour) were originally bought by Ken Partridge, and were hung in the dining room. Estimate in 1996? £150-250.
Many thanks to Jeannette and Lynn Mayes for tracking the uncropped picture down.

Ken Partridge plans: 1964, part 4 - entrance area.

The final section of these 1964 Ken Partridge plans - and the reason they were filed; to get planning permission for the entrance canopy, familiar from many fan photos taken just outside the front door.
Ron de Bruijn has sent the following shot, which gives the best view of this area thus far; note the Sgt Pepper cutout of Stuart Sutcliffe has found its way to Kenwood:


I've previously questioned whether the familiar shots of John and Julian sitting in the bath-chair were taken in the entrance hall, mainly because the following fan shots, taken a good 6 months or so apart, show identical details which the bath-chair photos don't share. However, the Partridge plan makes it clear why - the entrance hall was quite spacious, and so the area covered in the bath-chair photos cannot be seen in these pics:


Instead, the bath-chair shots were taken in the far corner:


Thanks again to Ron for sharing his great archive.

May 1967: part 2.2 - Hille House & yet more sunroom detritus.

Speaking of odd coincidences - the above photo of the Beatles at Hille House, Brian Epstein's private office, taken in May 1967 (though not, I think, on May 18). Mark Lewisohn has been in touch, and he reckons the picture in the previous post was also taken in this location. That makes sense, so I dug out the above photo to illustrate - and realised that this was the very one that Ken "BZ" Wood was referring to in his comment on the TeenBeat post.
Thus, this also provides a closer look at another bit of John's sunroom junk.

May 18, 1967: part 2.

Another photo from May 18, 1967; John, George and Ringo either just before setting off to meet Paul for their stroll round the Serpentine, or, obviously, just after the Hyde Park session had finished. It was quite possibly taken at Sunny Heights or Kinfauns if the former, and it could be Cavendish Avenue if the latter. (It might even be Kenwood, though nothing looks familiar.)
UPDATE: It's Hille House. See next post.

Kenwood: TeenBeat magazine - April, 1968.

Ron de Bruijn has sent in some more material, this time from a 1968 fan magazine: TeenBeat. The cropped, lo-res colour sunroom shot is familiar, but it's great to finally see a good quality scan. ("Kenwood porn" anyone?):


Of course, I couldn't resist comping both of the above to gain the widest perspective:


The pick of the pics has to be the following, however. I'd never seen this poolside variant before - and I'd guess that since its publication in April 1968, and with the obvious exception of those fortunate enough to own a copy of the magazine in question, no-one else has either:


It's another great shot, and begs all the usual questions. (Again, these are all quite hi-res, so click on them for the big picture.)
Many thanks to Ron for sharing this material.

Kenwood: Pepper sleeve/ sunroom detritus.

One of the most obvious objects on view atop the sunroom shelves in June 1967 was what appears to have been an ornate candle holder of some kind. Blog reader Sergey has sent an email pointing out that this very item is part of the Pepper sleeve, situated on the ground to the left of the Rolling Stones doll, and he's sent the above to illustrate.
And so it is. I certainly hadn't spotted it before. In fact, that little corner of the sleeve has at least 3 Kenwood related articles: the "candle holder", the portable television and the statue. Lewis Carroll's head (not literally) also ended up gracing the entrance hall bookshelves...


...and at least one other cutout found its way to Kenwood too, which I'll deal with in a forthcoming post.
Funny how you stop seeing the over familiar. Thanks to Sergey.

Tittenhurst Park: part 2 - Weeping Blue Atlas etc

Sentimentalist has forwarded some intriguing shots of the grounds at Tittenhurst. The above photos show the famous Weeping Blue Atlas cedars on the front lawn; there are also a few people, presumably included to give a sense of scale.
To be serious, though, I don't know who the non-Fab element are in these shots. I'd guess at Ringo-era, however, as in the following that certainly looks like one of the Sunny Heights lions:


Errr...


Muchas gracias to Sentimentalist for sharing these photos.

Tittenhurst Park: part 1 - Three Virgins.

As the name of the blog might suggest, Tittenhurst isn't really my "thang". However, I've recently received some related material that is of interest. First the above; a great shot of John and Yoko in the room that, I think, went on to become one half of the "Imagine" room, following renovation in 1970. (A partition wall was knocked down to make one larger space).
Plenty of Kenwood detritus is spottable, not to mention endearing evidence of the pair's "Let It All Hang Oot" policy (are those lithographs of an erotic nature hanging there?).
Speaking of which: Who was the Third Virgin?; the identity of the figure seen standing beside John and Yoko above the fireplace has been posited as Peter Brown, and even Macca. In fact, Yoko herself cleared this one up in an interview (not with me, I hasten to add)...
YO: "(Regarding) the 'Two Virgins' photo with another person standing beside us. The only one I know is the one that a professor sent to us at the time, saying he liked the Two Virgins photo idea so much that he joined in. He was standing naked in the picture next to us! John thought it was funny, I didn't like it that much. The professor looked just as 'au naturel' as us, meaning, you knew he came from the preGym generation! Other people probably must have done it, too. This one the professor sent us was a huge photo -the size of a large poster- with a decent frame around it. I don't know where it went. We lost it."

I also have another pic of the same room as above, this one taken, I think, before John and Yoko bought Tittenhurst; it is interesting to compare. (There is a marked lack of full frontals, for one, or possibly several, thing(s)).


Many thanks to Ron de Bruijn for the first photo, and the Yoko quote.

Kenwood: a little light reading, part 2.

I've long been puzzling, off and on (mainly off), over the identity of the left-hand volume (seen above on display in the sunroom). It does seem to have been placed there deliberately; John was never a man to let an opportunity for a plug go by, and so the fact that the other book, a contemporary U.S. edition of his collected works, is on display mid-photo session is hardly surprising.
But what was the left-hand one? I thought it may have been something to do with calligraphy (given the cover, and the fact that John (not even ostensibly) and Cyn (actually) both studied lettering at art school), but then Ron de Bruijn sent me a very hi-res scan of the above photo. We blew up that corner, and after much squinting (and a moment when the title appeared to be something to do with perverts), there it was: Proverbs For Daily Living, published in 1967 by the Peter Pauper Press:



It's a collection of aphorisms, arranged according to date, from January to December. To illustrate, here is the page which corresponds to John's birthday:


As ever, odd coincidences are there for those who wish to find them:


So, there we have it. Apparently, he also had illustrated adages of a similar type hanging on the walls of the kitchen. (Why did John chose to highlight this particular book, assuming he did? At a wild guess, it may have been something to do with Mimi; a lot of the proverbs in the book sound like Mimi.)

34 Montagu Square: then & now.

34 Montagu Square; home, though possibly at different times, to Ringo & Maureen, Jimi Hendrix, Lil Powell, and John & Yoko. Sentimentalist has sent me some shots ca. 1965. In the following set of photos, you can see the ground floor living room in that year, and the same area in 2002:



These were taken in the basement, in a room opposite the kitchen:



The same area in 2002 HERE.
And some more shots taken in the kitchen, and upstairs:



There is a very interesting set of photos taken inside the flat in 2002, available HERE.
In particular, THIS one, as the room shown past the hall was the location of the Two Virgins sleeve photo.
Planning permission is currently being sought to affix a blue plaque to the exterior - with only John getting a mention. Many thanks to Sentimentalist, who runs the Little Willow & It's Only Love sites (links under Friends & Neighbours).

Kenwood: the French seamstress.

Not this titting photo again...even I am saying it. Oh yes...this photo is the most familiar remnant of Lennon-era Kenwood; it's been seen a hundred times in a hundred books, and whenever a picture editor needs a photo to illustrate John's "torpor" during the Kenwood years, this is the one they go for. (To be fair, there isn't a lot of choice in the "illustrating John's torpor at Kenwood" department.)
And yet, whatever it is, it's not that. The woman sitting on the left turns out to be...the French seamstress. Ron de Bruijn has spotted that the footwear matches. I thought it might have been Cyn, or Marijke, but it's not - it's our Gallic tailor. And you can see John's black jacket too.
So what is happening here is as follows: John on the couch flicking through International Times, waiting for the tailor, sitting on the chair opposite, to finish his jacket, so he can get on with the photo session. As soon as the jacket was fitted, photos were taken in the entrance hall, and by the swimming pool.


Thus, this pic actually gives the lie to the consensual view that John was just sitting on his arse at Kenwood. (Though I think the songs he wrote are a better, and more obvious, illustration...he may not have been happy, but he was certainly productive.)
It's possible to see something new in a very familiar photo...and there will be more to come regarding this particular pic.

Kenwood: sunroom - June 29, 1967.

June 29, 1967 was a busy day chez Lennon. Not only was he playing host to Simon and Marijke and being fitted with new clothing courtesy of a French seamstress (or rather "een jonge Franse modeontwerpster"), but he also, as any fule noe, had the Beatles Book monthly round to record all this and more, photographically; and praise be to the church of your choice that he did, for otherwise there would be no visual record of Kenwood's interior at that time, give or take the odd fan photo of the sunroom.
So here is another scan from the Dutch magazine PEP, ca 1967; I'd never seen this particular photo before, and it's surprising (and surprisingly good) that "new" shots from this session continue to surface.
While I'm about it, I may as well also include the following - comped, imperfectly, from two images in an attempt to gain a whole wall perspective; which didn't exactly work, but nevertheless...


Huge thanks again to Ron de Bruijn for the first photo.

Kenwood: north-west end - layout, part 2; the Yard.

Particularly back in the day, Kenwood, as has been noted at some length, was an eccentric structure...and no part illustrates that better than the section built beyond the sunroom. The original 1913 plan, as seen above, shows a yard pegged onto the north-west end. I'd assumed that this would have been built over when the place was extended; yet another error, as it turns out.
The aerial shots that have surfaced looked odd to me - that portion appears to be a mess - half finished, with a large hole in the roof:


Yet that hole is there in both the above photos, one of which dates from the '60s, the other from the '90s. Not being insane, I didn't give this much thought before now; it just seemed like one more item for the ever expanding Weird Kenwood list.
I also assumed that the door evident to the left of the sunroom must have led to the kitchen. Wrong again - as can be seen, it actually led to that strange uncovered bit:


What was that (to again use the technical term) "strange uncovered bit"? It turns out to have been, as the '90s plan shows, the very yard evident on the 1913 plan - still there over 80 years later.
It's very odd, however. You would never have been able to tell at ground level, that the highlighted part of the house was exposed to the elements, or that the door there led to a "yard" in the middle of that end.
I have no idea why this was done; maybe the idea was to have a kind of courtyard. Who knows? But there it is...


The '95 renovation, of course, finally put paid to the yard - that section is now part of the much expanded kitchen.

Kenwood: north-west end - layout, part 1.

Many details are still unclear, naturally, but in recent weeks most of the big questions regarding the Lennon-era layout of Kenwood have been answered, thanks to the 1964 Ken Partridge plans, and one or two "new" uncropped photos. The biggest remaining mystery concerns the north-west end of the house, as seen above; it constitutes (or constituted) a fair chunk of real estate, but what exactly did it contain?
The answer might just surprise you. But probably not.
First, let's remind "us-selves" of the changes this section underwent during the '95 renovations. The whole area from the sunroom on was demolished and re-built.
Compare the following:


Notice also the comparative sizes of the old, Tarrant built, and new, '95-era garages above. Next, take a look at this, very familiar, picture:


"So what?" I hear you mutter, "This was taken in the garage, right?"
Well, yes and no. The old garage looks too small to accommodate a Roller and a Mini, and it occurred to me that some other details didn't quite fit, either; eg where is the canopy that can be seen in the John photo? So I had a look again at the colour aerial shot...and sure enough, there is a canopy attached to the north west extension...


The clincher would seem to be this '95 plan (pre-renovation), which does what the Partridge plan doesn't - namely, shows the sunroom (albeit the '95 version) and the north-west extension (ditto), canopy in place, and labelled "GARAGE":


So what might well have lain behind that window overlooking the swimming pool was one or other of John's automobiles. This would make sense, for several reasons; John, at that point, had a weakness for cars - at any one time he owned at least 3, including the Rolls. Cynthia also had at least one. It's possible the big extension housed John's "wheels", and the much smaller old garage was home to Cyn's. It might also explain why this part of the house doesn't show up on the Partridge plans - because, applying Occam's razor, it simply didn't exist at that point. John could have had the extension built precisely because he needed more storage space for his cars, the unenvironmentally sound little moptop that he was. (UPDATE - The account of the June '67 visit to Kenwood in the Beatles Book monthly has this to say at one point: "John led the way to the massive double garage at the right hand side of the house". That has to refer to the north-west extension; the old Tarrant garage is clearly very small.)
It would also explain why the Tarrant garage was demolished and rebuilt in '95 - because what had been the main (extension) garage was being converted to a games room, thus making the construction of a bigger "external" garage necessary.
As to when the original sunroom and extension were constructed, it's hard to say - but presumably during the huge round of renovation that accompanied John's initial purchase of the property; late 1964/early 1965. More on this bit, inevitably, to follow...