Part one of a ten-day series marking 50 years since George Harrison purchased a run-down estate in Henley-on-Thames: Friar Park. (You can keep up with the series on the harrisonarchive Instagram account.)
Pictured: George photographed by Pattie, Pattie photographed by George, Friar Park, circa 1970, photos © Pattie Boyd; George in one of Friar Park's grottos, 1970, photo © Barry Feinstein.
On 14 January 1970, George purchased Friar Park, an estate built in the 1870s by Sir Frank Crisp, and subsequently owned by Sir Percival David (who lived there from 1919-1951), and the nuns of St. John Bosco (who lived there from 1951-1969).
A look at the first months of George and Pattie Boyd living there:
"When I first saw this place a year or so earlier, I still couldn’t afford it! It was Derek Taylor who talked me into buying the property after visiting it again with me, back when there were Catholic Nuns living here and there was talk of demolishing the run-down building because of the upkeep. Derek and I smoked some pot in the lower garden, and he told me to go ahead and get it. So I’ve spent the last 30 years fixing up the place, finding local people to help me do the gardening that used to be handled by a staff of over 40 in the 1870s, when it was built by a lawyer-baronet named Sir Frankie Crisp." - George Harrison, Billboard, 19 Jun 1999
"The whole house, though, was in a state of terrible disrepair. There was grass coming up through the dining-room floor, the weather had damaged the wall coverings [...]. In fact, the whole house had to be gutted from top to bottom, then have its beautiful, quirky features carefully restored. [...] [At first] the only two rooms we could warm were the kitchen, a huge room with a lovely big scrubbed-pine table that sewed twenty, and the hall, where there was a big fireplace. At night we used to pile up the fire in the hall with logs and sleep in front of it in sleeping-bags, wrapped in hats, coats, scarves, anything we could find." - Pattie Boyd, Wonderful Tonight (x)