Friar Park, George Harrison’s home from 1970 to his death in 2001.
The huge 1889 neo-Gothic mansion, with its grottoes, secret passageways, giggling gnomes, sprawling gardens and mysterious and quirky inscriptions, inspired quite a few songs by the former Beatle. Among them “Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)” (1970), a nod to its eccentric former owner; “Ding Dong, Ding Dong” (1974) which contains one of its many inscriptions: “Ring out the old, ring in the new / Ring out the false, ring in the true”; and “The Answer’s at the End” (1975), of which the title and a portion of the lyrics are taken from another one of its engravings: “Scan not a friend with a microscopic glass / You know his faults, now let his foibles pass / Life is one long enigma, my friend / So read on, read on, the answer’s at the end.”
“Flying Hour”, written in 1978, quotes an inscription from Friar Park’s clock tower:
Past is gone, thou canst not that recall
Future is not, may not be at all
Present is, [so] improve the flying hour
Present only is within thy power.
Wise words. Further, the cover of George’s first solo album ALL THINGS MUST PASS (1970) was shot at Friar park, as were the videos for the 1976 songs “Crackerbox Palace” and “True Love”, and I’m sure you’ve seen that bit in THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY of Paul, George and Ringo reminiscing in the garden. For George, the mansion was a treasure trove that kept on giving.
Having grown up in a similar spooky and magical place, also with bits of wisdom scattered throughout (“Fear not about what might happen / For what happens is never what you fear”), I’ve always been fascinated by Friar Park, so much that I visited it in 2011. I took this photo of its gate then (that’s not the house by the way, but one of its lodges):
As former Beatles press agent Derek Taylor wrote about the house: “It is a dream on a hill and it came, not by chance, to the right man at the right time.”
There’s some more to show even, so there will be a follow-up later on.
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