Post by KenWood on Feb 25, 2009 21:11:52 GMT -5
John Lennon, of The Beatles, bought Kenwood (for £20,000) on July 15, 1964. In October 2006, Kenwood went back on the market, with an asking price of £5.95 million ($12.3 million), and was sold in January 2007 for £5.8 million. It has been claimed that every owner after the Lennons has sold it due to divorce...
This forum is dedicated to Kenwood, the house on St George's Hill, Weybridge where John Lennon lived between 1964 and 1968. It is primarily intended as a repository of visual material: photos/video etc., I will post written material and published articles about John Lennon, any personal encounters and other material whilst John Lennon lived at Kenwood.
You can e-mail me at:
kenwoodlennon@hotmail.co.uk
(Legal: All material is the property of the photographer/copyright holder concerned. Any such persons who wishes to remove an image under the above ownership rights should contact me and I will remove the image).
Many Thanks
!Enjoy!
K E N W O O D
John Lennon bought this 27 room mock Tudor residence for £20,000 on the 15th July 1964 at the suggestion of the Beatles' then accountant, Walter Strach, who lived three kilometres from the St George's Hill estate. John immediately ordered an extensive renovation which cost £40,000 and was designed by Ken Partridge, whose interior design work at Brian Epstein’s Knightsbridge flat had impressed him.
Having already dropped drink in favour of the comparatively benign yet illegal Marijuana by the end of 1964, it was here at Kenwood that Lennon would regularly take the infinitely more powerful, but then legal and little known "drug" LSD (a synthetic chemical which bears a structural resemblance to a neurotransmitter substance found in the brain). John and Cynthia, together with Beatle George and his wife Patti, had been given coffee spiked with d-lysergic acid diethylamide by a friend at his dinner party. John Riley, a dentist, hosted the party at his flat on Strathearn Place close to Hyde Park sometime during the first half of 1965. Despite the overwhelming effects, John & George (together with Ringo, Neil Aspinall and members of the Byrds) voluntarily took LSD for the 2nd time during a US tour break in Los Angeles.
Following the final British tour of December 1965 and three mentally exhausting years of Beatlemania, the fab four began what was basically a four month recuperation period and Lennon soon began to frequently experiment with LSD at home which gave him the inspiration to write the likes of "Tomorrow never knows", "Rain" and no doubt had a degree of influence on his thinking behind the "bigger than Jesus" statement, but the general public would remain ignorant of Lennon's drug use until over a year later. John's wife Cynthia had not enjoyed the initial LSD experience and when John persuaded her to take it again she had an equally disturbing trip*, they slowly began to drift apart from this point onwards.
*George too had experienced "the fear" during his third LSD trip in early 1966 which brought on a sensation that he had struggled to cope with as a child and, still unable to deal with it, he refused to take LSD again. But during his trip to India in the Autumn of that year, George kept hearing that he should look fear in the face and then it wouldn't bother him any more. Upon his return to England, Harrison resumed his use of LSD and on one of his post-India acid trips he decided that it would be a good idea to transform the outside of his bungalow into a psychedelic mural, which he proceeded to paint himself!
John was photographed at Kenwood during an exclusive 'at home' session with photographer Leslie Bryce on the 29th June 1967, he posed for familiar shots - many with son Julian - such as standing next to his psychedelically painted Rolls-Royce, sat by the swimming pool, playing in his music room, on a rocking horse in the nursery and in the garden - with several changes of clothes. By now he was taking LSD to the point of inducing what would now be recognised as an 'ecstasy' like high and having all but surrendered his ego to a Beatle void, he decided to go along with George and Patti's new found guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who's promise of a natural high without the aid of drugs was suddenly all the more attractive following a series of high profile celebrity drug busts*. The Beatles publicly declared that they had given up drugs in favour of transcendental meditation and vast quantities of LSD were apparently buried in the Kenwood gardens (One wonders what future Beatle archaeologists in millennia to come will make of it!).
*The Beatles had even considered buying a Greek island on which they would build a private commune where they would be free to take drugs without fear of a visit from Sgt. Pilcher. They were conveniently away surveying potential havens at the time The Times newspaper ran an advert calling for tolerance of the private use of marijuana which all four Beatles had signed and helped to pay for.
Late in 1967 John became reasonably close to his father again, the pair had first awkwardly re-united in 1964 (almost 20 years after they had last parted in Blackpool). There are a number of differing accounts as to exactly how the re-union occurred, but perhaps the most believable version has them meeting in Brian Epstein's office following the burst of press coverage that Alf had received once reporters had tracked him down. John's father was finally invited into 'Kenwood' three years later and this proved convivial enough to warrant him staying with the Lennon's for a significant period of time around the Christmas/New year period which, following the associations with drugs and a foreign Hindu preacher, saw the press begin to turn against the Beatles. The inevitable backlash had been delayed in sympathy for the tragic death of their manager Brian Epstein, but the Magical Mystery Tour film (which neither appealed to a straight or turned-on Boxing Day audience) gave the press the excuse they were looking for to put the boot in.
This forum is dedicated to Kenwood, the house on St George's Hill, Weybridge where John Lennon lived between 1964 and 1968. It is primarily intended as a repository of visual material: photos/video etc., I will post written material and published articles about John Lennon, any personal encounters and other material whilst John Lennon lived at Kenwood.
You can e-mail me at:
kenwoodlennon@hotmail.co.uk
(Legal: All material is the property of the photographer/copyright holder concerned. Any such persons who wishes to remove an image under the above ownership rights should contact me and I will remove the image).
Many Thanks
!Enjoy!
K E N W O O D
John Lennon bought this 27 room mock Tudor residence for £20,000 on the 15th July 1964 at the suggestion of the Beatles' then accountant, Walter Strach, who lived three kilometres from the St George's Hill estate. John immediately ordered an extensive renovation which cost £40,000 and was designed by Ken Partridge, whose interior design work at Brian Epstein’s Knightsbridge flat had impressed him.
Having already dropped drink in favour of the comparatively benign yet illegal Marijuana by the end of 1964, it was here at Kenwood that Lennon would regularly take the infinitely more powerful, but then legal and little known "drug" LSD (a synthetic chemical which bears a structural resemblance to a neurotransmitter substance found in the brain). John and Cynthia, together with Beatle George and his wife Patti, had been given coffee spiked with d-lysergic acid diethylamide by a friend at his dinner party. John Riley, a dentist, hosted the party at his flat on Strathearn Place close to Hyde Park sometime during the first half of 1965. Despite the overwhelming effects, John & George (together with Ringo, Neil Aspinall and members of the Byrds) voluntarily took LSD for the 2nd time during a US tour break in Los Angeles.
Following the final British tour of December 1965 and three mentally exhausting years of Beatlemania, the fab four began what was basically a four month recuperation period and Lennon soon began to frequently experiment with LSD at home which gave him the inspiration to write the likes of "Tomorrow never knows", "Rain" and no doubt had a degree of influence on his thinking behind the "bigger than Jesus" statement, but the general public would remain ignorant of Lennon's drug use until over a year later. John's wife Cynthia had not enjoyed the initial LSD experience and when John persuaded her to take it again she had an equally disturbing trip*, they slowly began to drift apart from this point onwards.
*George too had experienced "the fear" during his third LSD trip in early 1966 which brought on a sensation that he had struggled to cope with as a child and, still unable to deal with it, he refused to take LSD again. But during his trip to India in the Autumn of that year, George kept hearing that he should look fear in the face and then it wouldn't bother him any more. Upon his return to England, Harrison resumed his use of LSD and on one of his post-India acid trips he decided that it would be a good idea to transform the outside of his bungalow into a psychedelic mural, which he proceeded to paint himself!
John was photographed at Kenwood during an exclusive 'at home' session with photographer Leslie Bryce on the 29th June 1967, he posed for familiar shots - many with son Julian - such as standing next to his psychedelically painted Rolls-Royce, sat by the swimming pool, playing in his music room, on a rocking horse in the nursery and in the garden - with several changes of clothes. By now he was taking LSD to the point of inducing what would now be recognised as an 'ecstasy' like high and having all but surrendered his ego to a Beatle void, he decided to go along with George and Patti's new found guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who's promise of a natural high without the aid of drugs was suddenly all the more attractive following a series of high profile celebrity drug busts*. The Beatles publicly declared that they had given up drugs in favour of transcendental meditation and vast quantities of LSD were apparently buried in the Kenwood gardens (One wonders what future Beatle archaeologists in millennia to come will make of it!).
*The Beatles had even considered buying a Greek island on which they would build a private commune where they would be free to take drugs without fear of a visit from Sgt. Pilcher. They were conveniently away surveying potential havens at the time The Times newspaper ran an advert calling for tolerance of the private use of marijuana which all four Beatles had signed and helped to pay for.
Late in 1967 John became reasonably close to his father again, the pair had first awkwardly re-united in 1964 (almost 20 years after they had last parted in Blackpool). There are a number of differing accounts as to exactly how the re-union occurred, but perhaps the most believable version has them meeting in Brian Epstein's office following the burst of press coverage that Alf had received once reporters had tracked him down. John's father was finally invited into 'Kenwood' three years later and this proved convivial enough to warrant him staying with the Lennon's for a significant period of time around the Christmas/New year period which, following the associations with drugs and a foreign Hindu preacher, saw the press begin to turn against the Beatles. The inevitable backlash had been delayed in sympathy for the tragic death of their manager Brian Epstein, but the Magical Mystery Tour film (which neither appealed to a straight or turned-on Boxing Day audience) gave the press the excuse they were looking for to put the boot in.