Boobshurst Park

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Entrance gate

Boobshurst Park is a country house in the style of Georgian architecture . The 29 hectare property is located west of London and east of Ascot in Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England . It served as a residence for John Lennon and his second wife Yoko Ono from the summer of 1969 to August 1971. From then until the late 1980s, it was inhabited by Ringo Starr .

Previous owners

The history of Tittenhurst Park goes back to 1737, the facade of the house, however, dates mostly from around 1830. In 1869 the philanthropist Thomas Holloway (1800-1883) bought the property and lived there until his death. Holloway was the founder of two institutions that were built in the vicinity: the Holloway Sanatorium in Virginia Water ( Surrey ) and the Royal Holloway College in Englefield Green . Around 1898 Thomas Herman Lowinsky bought the property. Lowinsky was a former general manager of the Hyderabad (Deccan) Company . He was an active member of the Royal Horticultural Society and won their gold medal for his rhododendrons , of which he had a large collection in the Gardens of Boetthurst Park.

John Lennon and Boobshurst Park

John Lennon bought the property after selling his house in Kenwood , Surrey , where he lived with his first wife, Cynthia Lennon , because Boobshurst Park reminded him of Calderstones Park in Liverpool , where he spent much of his childhood. Lennon bought the property from Peter Cadbury for £ 145,000 . The property includes spectacular gardens, a New Tudor style villa and a few cottages that were previously occupied by the servants. Lennon and Ono renovated the house for about double the purchase price to customize the interiors, commissioned some hand-woven oriental rugs, and created a lake without permission that they could see from their bedroom.

The last Beatles' photographs were taken on August 22, 1969 at the Tittenhurst Park property. The photos were used as the cover for the front and back of their compilation album Hey Jude in early 1970 . That same year, after the final falling out of the Beatles, Lennon built his own recording studio called Ascot Sound Studios in Tittenhurst Park , where he recorded their next albums with Imagine and Ono with Fly . The covers of the albums John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band and Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band were recorded by Lennon and Ono in the Tittenhurst Park with an Instamatic camera and parts of the Imagine music video in film length, which contains parts of the album Fly , were recorded on the Plot recorded. The interior of the house was also used as the backdrop for the promotional film for the single Imagine , in which Ono is seen opening the blinds while John Lennon plays on a white grand piano .

Lennon and Ono made frequent trips to the United States in 1970 and 1971, first for primary therapy at Arthur Janov's Institute in California , then in Houston and New York City for custody hearings of Yoko Ono's daughter, Kyoko Chan Cox . Ono spent her early adult life in New York and felt more at home there than in England, as did Lennon after he had had enough of the country life, so in late 1971 they rented an apartment on Bank Street in Manhattan . On August 31, 1971, they moved for good from Tittenhurst Park and moved to New York.

Ascot Sound Studios

Ascot Sound Studios was equipped with analog technology recording studio could be installed, the John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1970 in her home in Tittenhurst Park. The studio was equipped with an eight-track recorder and a 16-channel mixer . With their own studio, Lennon and Ono were not dependent on booking studio time at Abbey Road Studios or another external studio. Sound engineers and additional musicians were hired as needed. While the Imagine and Fly albums were being recorded, musicians and technical staff stayed in the guest accommodations in Tittenhurst Park.

In 1971 Lennon's successful album Imagine , which was co-produced by Phil Spector , was recorded here. George Harrison played guitar on several songs, including How Do You Sleep? in whose text Lennon is very vicious about Paul McCartney . Ringo Starr, who was present at the recordings, went too far and declared, “That's enough, John.” The recordings for the album were filmed, and the material was used for both the documentary Imagine: John Lennon and used a making-of documentation of the album.

In parallel to the recordings for Imagine , work on Yoko Ono's album Fly took place. Subsequently, Lennon and Ono stopped recording at Ascot Sound Studios because the couple had moved to the United States.

Startling Studios

After Lennon decided to move to the United States, he sold Tittenhurst Park to Ringo Starr, who purchased the property on September 18, 1973. Starr renamed the recording studio Startling Studios . Before moving to Monaco in 1975 to save taxes, he used it as his private studio. The conversion into a commercial recording studio followed. The equipment was modernized and Mike O'Donnell, who previously worked at the Beatles' Apple Studio , took over the management of the studio and worked there, supported by David Tickle as a sound engineer . The artists who used the studio included Maggie Bell (1975, album Suicide Sal) , Roger Chapman (1978, album Chappo ), Split Enz (1978, album Frenzy ) and Def Leppard (1980, album On Through the Night) ). In 1979 the British heavy metal band Judas Priest used the studio to complete and mix their live album Unleashed in the East . In 1980 the band recorded their sixth studio album, British Steel, at Startling Studios. After Ringo Starr moved back to Tittenhurst Park in 1981, he only used the studio privately. In 1988 Starr sold the property to Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan , who completely renovated the property and had the studio removed.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Philip Norman: John Lennon: The Life . Harper Collins, Hammersmith, England 2008, ISBN 978-0-00-719741-5 , pp. 615-617.
  2. ^ Richard Williams: Royal Holloway College, A Pictorial History . Royal Holloway, University of London, Surrey 1983, ISBN 0-900145-83-8 , p. 6.
  3. ↑ John Blaney: John Lennon: Listen to this Book . Biddles Ltd., Guildford, Great Britain 2005, ISBN 0-9544528-1-X , p. 89.
  4. ^ Ascot Studios - Startling Studios. ( Memento of the original from August 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 8, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.philsbook.com
  5. ↑ www.rocktimes.de: Maggie Bell / Suicide Sal . Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  6. ↑ www.discogs.com: Startling Studios . Retrieved March 8, 2015.

Coordinates: 51 ° 24 '23.3 "  N , 0 ° 38' 5.7"  W.