IT IS a long way from a council house in Liverpool to a 160-acre estate in East Sussex. But with the homeowner hassles he is having, there must be days when Sir Paul McCartney longs for his teenage bedroom at 20 Forthlin Road, Liverpool L18.
As if the increasingly bitter divorce proceedings with the former model Heather Mills aren’t enough, he is now facing a planning battle with Rother District Council, which has refused to grant retrospective planning permission for a timber lodge and gym that he has had built in the grounds of Woodlands Farm, on his Peasmarsh Estate near Rye. If revised plans are not submitted to the council for approval, Sir Paul could be ordered to pull it down.
In Liverpool, where the Beatles were born and grew up, the decision has already been made to demolish the house where Ringo Starr spent the first six years of his life. It is in Madryn Street, in the Dingle, an area made famous by the television series Bread. Under the “Pathfinder” urban regeneration scheme, 467 houses in the “Welsh streets”, of which Madryn is one, will be cleared and replaced by new housing.
“There has been a big campaign to try to save the house, because it was where Ringo Starr lived,” says a spokeswoman for Liverpool City Council. “But people should know that the whole front of the house is not original. It was rebuilt in the 1970s.” It is a forlorn little place, rented out to students, according to a neighbour. But less than a mile away is Starr’s next home, a terraced house in Admiral Grove, closer to the local Princess Park and therefore more desirable. Margaret Grose has lived here for 28 years and in her immaculate front room has created a shrine to all things Ringo. “I’ve had visitors from all over the world,” she says, gesturing to gold discs and photographs.” Sometimes they even burst into tears when they stand in this room.”
Over at Mendips, the former home of John Lennon on Menlove Avenue, Woolton, and Sir Paul’s old abode at Forthlin Road, the National Trust has created official tributes by re-creating their homes as they lived in them in the 1950s and early 1960s. Mendips, where Lennon lived with his Aunt Mimi after his parents split up when he was five, was bought by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, in March 2002. Ono is thought to have paid about £150,000 for the property, which she donated to the National Trust.
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“The old adage that a house is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it is never more true than with Beatles’ houses,” says Shannon Conway, sales manager for King Sturge Residential in Liverpool. “Fans may love it, but not everybody would want tourists hanging around all the time, would they?” Menlove Avenue is staunch middle-class suburbia, geographically close to, but culturally a world away from, the terraces and council houses where Paul, Ringo and George grew up. The property website mouseprice.com puts it in the top ten streets to live within the L25 postcode, and states that the average current value of houses sold on Menlove Avenue is £320,808. This value is estimated to have gone up 137 per cent in five years.
In Speke — where Sir Paul lived for several years, and where George Harrison is still remembered by the chap who moved into his house, standing on the corner with his guitar — times have been hard. This sprawling council estate, to the south of the city centre, has suffered from unemployment and decline. The creation of several large industrial estates in Speke Halewood, housing companies as diverse as Marriott Hotels, HBOS and Novartis Vaccines , and the expansion of Liverpool John Lennon airport a few miles away, are gradually helping to turn fortunes around.
As yet, it is nothing like as dramatic as the transformation of what is now known as the Georgian Quarter, right in the middle of the city centre. Here, after their marriage, John and Cynthia Lennon lived for several months at Brian Epstein’s rented flat in Faulkner Street. Three years ago this area was popular only with prostitutes and drug addicts. Now it’s all delis and gastro-pubs and the site of Hope Street, Liverpool’s first boutique hotel, where Condoleezza Rice stayed in March.
“I wish I’d bought there five years ago,” says Shannon Conway. “There were amazing Georgian houses going for £120,000; now they’re on at £500,000. The Beatles did well with their houses. They should have held on to them.” Perhaps Sir Paul wishes he had.
JOHN LENNON
When Lennon’s parents split up in 1945, he ended up living in 251Menlove Avenue, Woolton, with his Aunt Mimi. As a teenager, he stayed at various flats rented by Stuart Sutcliffe, the Beatles’ original bassist. The average price of a terraced house in Wavertree is now 150,335, a Woolton semi-detached house now is £173,667 (although Menlove Avenue prices tend to be higher). At the time of his murder in December, 1980, JohnLennon lived in an apartment in the Dakota Building, West 72nd Street, New York. The New York estate agency City Realty saysYou can expect to pay from $16.5 million (£8.68 million) for a two-bedroom apartment in this prestigious Central Park West block today.
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PAUL MCCARTNEY
In 1955 the McCartney family settled in 20 Forthlin Road, Allerton. Today you would have to spend on average £143,562 for a terraced house in Allerton. Sir Paul McCartneyand his estranged wife are reported to own a worldwide property portfolio worth at least £32 million. This is believed to include homes in California, New York, St John’s Wood, northwest London, a farm in Argyll and a 160-acre estate at Peasmarsh, East Sussex, which Sir Paul bought on his marriage to Linda Eastman McCartney in 1969.
RINGO STARR
The house in Madryn Street where RingoStarr lived from his birth until he was six is scheduled for demolition. But his second home, in nearby Admiral Grove, is in an area that estate agents describe as “improving”. The average price today of a terraced house in the Dingle near Madryn Street is £66,900. Around Admiral Grove, this figure rises to £74,838. Ringo Starr now splits his time between an apartment in Monaco, a mansion in Cranleigh, Surrey, and a house in Santa Monica, California.
GEORGE HARRISON
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In 1950, when Harrison was seven, his family moved from a two-up two-down in Arnold Grove, Wavertree, to a new council house in Speke. A similar Wavertree property now would cost about £95,000. Until he died of cancer in 2001, he lived at Friar Park, a mansion in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. One local agent estimates that Friar Park is now worth more than £20 million. Harrison also had a holiday home in Nahiku, Hawaii, and a penthouse flat in the Kings Road, Chelsea.