TIMELINE: Houses (2011-2015)
Where exactly did Harry live in 2011-2015? Let’s recap for Ben Winston’s sake. For @cathuniverse, @bromanceshmomance, @srslycris, @daysundercover and all the anons in my inbox who asked.
13 September 2011 (First Single Release Week) - MTV UK, citing the Sun, reports “One Direction to get lavish London apartment each!” Says they “will soon be moving out of their parents houses to live in a series of lavish London apartments - courtesy of their boss Simon Cowell.” It said Liam, Niall and Zayn would get their own apartment, but Harry and Louis would share.
5 January 2012 (UK Leg of UAN Tour Resumes) - The Daily Mail (and several other outlets) report Harry and Louis are buying Ashley Cole’s former home, the flat they were renting in Princess Park Manor. This originated with Mark Meets, an independent entertainment reporter in the UK, saying Louis and Harry wanted to buy a flat in Chelsea, which is not the area where Princess Park is located. Ashley Cole played for Chelsea Football Club, so that may be where the confusion lies.
25 February 2012 (Beginning of American UAN promo) - The Sun reports Harry moved out of the Princess Park flats and into a condo in London he bought for £575,000.
6 March 2012 - Gordon Smart again publishes an article saying Harry bought a condo in London he bought for £575,000 with a Japanese Zen garden.
7 March 2012 (7 Days Before American release of UAN) - Flat supposedly put up for rent according to later reports.
6 April 2012 (Same week as SNL/Australian leg of UAN tour) - A series of articles is published on celebrity gossip sites like Sugarscape saying Louis and Harry still live together when they’re not on tour.
23 April 2012 (12 hours after Wellington/End of Australian UAN tour) - Daily Mail reports that “Former One Direction bachelor pad back on the market for £5,000 per month.” [Reports in January said they were paying £5,000 per week.] The article says it was listed as a “rental property” on 7 March 2012, which was right at the beginning of the American promo tour for Up All Night.
5 July 2012 (End of UAN tour) - Harry is papped out in London with Lou Teasdale and a real estate agent looking at property just 4 days after the end of the Up All Night tour and while Louis was on holiday in France with Eleanor and his family.
6 July 2012 - Capital FM article published saying Harry was looking to buy in Primrose Hill, probably based on where he was papped the day before.
16 July 2012 - The Daily Mail reports Harry was looking for a house in Primrose Hill earlier in the month (5 July) but that the house wasn’t for him, and he was still looking. They add “And let’s not forget that Harry already owns a £575,000 flat in East London…” The Mail says Liam was also looking for real estate at the time in Primrose Hill after Simon Cowell gave all the boys a £2 million bonus each following their tour in the U.S, though it’s possible this was an advance on the second album, and not a “bonus.” The article also mentions “Louis has just finalised a deal on a £2.5 million, four-storey house in North London.”
21-22 July 2012: Harry & Louis were pictured at a hotel together.
August 2012 - Harry buys white house in Hampstead Heath area of London, now formally known on Google maps as “Erskine House,” which is, amazingly, what Harry named his record and touring companies. Super clandestine.
27 September 2012 (Beginning of TMH Album Promo) - The Mirror reports Harry has bought the Hampstead Heath house in North London and calls it the “perfect party pad.” In the article, they say Harry used to live in the “gritty East End” of London that he bought in 2011 and cost $575,000 [no story published in 2011 can corroborate this claim]. The Mirror quotes a source saying “a lot of Harry’s friends live in Primrose Hill and Belsize Park, so he wanted to move closer to them,” meaning Nick Grimshaw and that crew. It goes on to say Harry told pals he was throwing a huge house-warming bash. The Daily Mail publishes a similar article with the same claims: moving from East London flat to “palatial pad,” calls it a “party palace.”
16 October 2012 - Variety publishes an article about the house with pictures of the inside and outside and the actual floor plan, saying it sits “hard up on the street” meaning directly on the street. Variety provides a small addendum at the end of the story saying the claim Harry “lives –or live in–a swanky East London flat” is based on reports from numerous celebrity-based gossip blogs and glossies, but no source of the information can be found.
1 November 2012 - In an interview with Radio KissKiss, Louis says “We all, like, have our own private homes and we think it’s really important to keep our privacy there. And, actually, no one knows where we live. Hehehe.”
8 November 2012 (4 Days before TMH is released) - Celebs Now (then written by Dan Wootton) reports Louis says he and Harry no longer live together, but there was no friction and they still get on really well.
14 November 2012 (Same Week TMH is released) - It was announced Morgan Spurlock would be doing a “documentary” about One Direction to be released 23 August 2013.
1 February 2013 - First mention of Harry living at his “mates’ houses.” Ed told WPLJ-FM in New York City “The strangest thing about Harry is he lived at my flat for a while, but he had a house, he had two houses… this was like a couple of months ago. He had two very posh houses in London and he’d just come and stay.”
24 February 2013 (UK Leg of TMH Tour/LFW) - Harry is seen buying vintage decor at a shop in North London, conveniently in the middle of the UK leg of the Take Me Home tour.
5 April 2013 - Morgan Spurlock tweets picture of Harry in bed at presumably Ben’s house in the attic.
14 April 2013 - The Daily Star reports Harry’s neighbors hate him for blocking their car bays with his many luxury cars at his East London flat. They say it only comes with 1 parking space, but reports at the time it was announced he bought the house said it came with a double car lift and enough space to park 4 cars.
19 September 2013 (LFW) - The Star reports Harry “enjoys sleepovers at Nick Grimshaw’s flat.” “SINGER Harry Styles’s bromance with gay DJ Nick Grimshaw is so strong that he has been sleeping at his flat for almost a week.”
16 December 2013 - Harry wins court order against paparazzi. “ Court orders photographers to stop pursuing singer, placing him under surveillance or loitering within 50 metres of his home.”
30 December 2013 - Meredith and Harry papped walking dogs together at Hampstead Heath park.
21 February 2014 (Break before WWA Tour) - Harry buys first house in Post Office area of Los Angeles via Bubblegum Trust.
14 March 2014 - The Daily Mail reports Harry bought the house in Los Angeles.
23 May 2014 (Post Weedgate Week) - The Daily Mail reports Harry had spent £500,000 to date renovating the Erskine house by adding on an extension and a state-of-the-art underground car park for his fleet of sports cars.
17 February 2015 (Beginning of OTRA tour) - Yahoo! UK reports it’s taking so long for Harry to renovate his Erskine house because “he’s attempting to build an actual London pub inside it.”
1 November 2015 (Promo for Made in the A.M.) - The Sunday Times does an interview with One Direction where they quote say: “After Styles bought his big house in north London “in about 2011”, he filled it with builders and ended up moving into the attic room of the producer Ben Winston (son of the genetic scientist, Robert) and his wife for 18 months. “That saved me,” he says. “I was only supposed to be with them for three weeks. Nobody knew where I was — that can actually, sometimes, be possible.” So print Harry was saying He stayed with Ben from approximately August 2012-February 2014.
18 April 2017 (Release of Harry’s first Single) - Rolling Stone says “Styles had just moved out of his family home in Cheshire, an inconvenient three hours north of London. He found a home he liked near the Winstons in Hampstead Heath. The new house needed two weeks of work. Styles asked if he could briefly move in with Winston and his wife, Meredith. “She agreed,” Winston says, “but only for two weeks.“” “For the next 20 months, one of the most desired stars on the planet slept on a small mattress in an attic.” So that means, it was August 2012-April 2014.
HOUSES AS PROMO FODDER: I wanted to disprove Ben, specifically, when I began this timeline, but looking at it now, the obvious ebb and flow of the “house” narrative with the beginning and ending of major promo times is hilariously obvious. I think it served 2 purposes: try to make “Larry Stylinson” seem like a bachelor pad bromance and paint all of the boys as middle class kids who made it big after their first album and bought big houses and a lot of cars.
WHAT TIMELINE?: The timeline of the Ben story itself has changed over the years. In its most recent form (April 2017), Ben says Harry stayed with them 20 months. If we assume this begins in August 2012, that means Harry lived with them so much they were “gutted” when he left in April 2014.
WHAT EAST LONDON FLAT: What the fuck East London flat were people talking about in 2012? He supposedly bought it right before he went on a 4 month tour of America and Australia and America again, then upon returning immediately bought the Erksine House, but didn’t live in it for 3 years and lived with Ben? Nobody ever reported that he sold it. Just that he bought it.
WHY WERE THEY AT A HOTEL: Why were Harry and Louis at a hotel in July 2012 if they’d both recently bought houses? Harry couldn’t stay with Ben until August? But Niall was still living in the Princess Park flats, so was it just Harry and Louis who couldn’t be seen there together since it was reported they’d moved out? WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS ABOUT?
LOUIS MOCKS THE NARRATIVE: In early November 2012, Louis, on video, said “nobody knows where we live” and laughed in a smug manner. Was he talking about Harry living with Ben and Meredith only? Because everyone else’s houses, including Harry’s own, got announced in the press, sometimes to the point they included pap pics, neighborhoods with nearby landmarks and even floor plans.
DECOR???: Harry was seen purchasing decor like clocks, flags, a vintage cash register and a pair of animal horns in February 2013, but for what house? If he was staying with Ben and Meredith, why was he buying decor? Where did the decor go, because it wasn’t seen in the attic when he was filmed there for This Is Us.
WHERE WAS HARRY SLEEPING: Ed said in February 2013 that Harry had 2 houses but lived for a while with Ed “a couple of months ago.” In April 2013, Morgan Spurlock tweeted a picture of him in Ben’s attic waking up like he lived there. In September 2013, it was said Harry enjoyed sleepovers at Nick Grimshaw’s flat and had his own spare room. So did Ben and Meredith just get Harry every other weekend and on holidays?
HARRY MOCKS THE NARRATIVE: On 1D Day, which aired 23 November 2013, Harry mocked his vagabond portrayal by saying “I don’t have a house, so no food.”
GOGGLEBOX???: On 18 November 2013, Harry asked the Access Hollywood interviewer if they’d ever seen Gogglebox. The interviewer asked “When do you get a chance to watch it?” And Louis responded “Well, when we’re home - when we work from London.” So did he mean when he and Harry were staying in Ben’s attic or sleeping in Nick’s spare room or on Ed’s couch?
HARRY GETS AN INJUNCTION: What house did Harry get an injunction against? Typically, you can’t get an injunction against a house that you do not own. Are we to assume he got an injunction at a house at which he was temporarily squatting in the attic?
HARRY GETS PAPPED: 2 weeks after he got the injunction, he got papped in Hampstead Heath with Meredith Winston walking dogs. So am I supposed to think he got an injunction against the paps for a house and then went and got papped near it? Or did Meredith come to Harry’s Erskine House with some dogs and get papped near it?
THE RENOVATIONS: In May 2014, it was formally reported that Harry was doing major renovations to the Erskine house, including moving the location of the kitchen, adding on and building a new car park. In February 2015, Yahoo! reported it was still being renovated. But Harry and Ben have both said Harry moved out sometime around March or April 2014. Are we supposed to assume Harry never slept in London from April 2014-whenever the Erskine House was ready for people like Tess and Camille to post from at convenient times?
Anyways, this entire timeline is a mess. I don’t think Harry ever stayed at Ben’s more than a night or two. And Ben has turned that into a “family home” story about how close he is with Harry but also how many people Harry fucked in his attic. And that “family home” narrative is actually one that Harry and Louis started about their own flat in August 2011, so that’s that on that.
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