Yoko buys Mendips; donates it to National Trust

Update (5/6/03)
  • NY Times: The House That Can't Forget the Boy With the Guitar
  • NY Times: John Lennon's Modest Beginnings, Now on Show in Liverpool

    Update (4/7/03)
  • UK Guardian: A day in the lives: Mike Kiely takes a trip down memory lane at the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney

    Update (4/1/03)

  • BBC: Lennon's peace message still strong (Thanks to Adam Powell.)
  • BBC: Mendips: The childhood home of John Lennon

    Update (3/29/03)

  • VOA News: Former Beatle Lennon's Childhood Home Opened to Public
  • This Is London: Let It Be at John's house (Also, "Gallery" link at bottom of page of above link features photo tour of Mendips.) (Thanks to Trini Schultz.)
  • BBC: And there are places I'll remember
  • Irish Examiner: Lennon's early home opens to public
  • Mendips photo: http://www.n-tv.de/3149541.html
    (Thanks to Miki Narita.)

  • People: Lennon and McCartney: United for peace?
  • UK Guardian: Big ideas as tiny bedroom opened

    Update II (3/28/03)

  • Sky News: Lennon on the war
  • IC Liverpool: Yoko opens a 'special place in John's heart'
  • Megastar: The house of Lennon
  • UK Mirror: HOUSE WHERE THE SPIRIT OF JOHN LENNON LIVES ON
  • Reuters: Yoko Ono opens Lennon's childhood Liverpool home
  • ITV: Lennon 'would have told off Blair'
  • IC Liverpool: Yoko dines with old friends
    (Thanks to Barbara Pazmino.)

    Update (3/28/03)
  • At a ceremony opening John's Mendips home to public tours, his widow Yoko Ono said John would have expressed his feelings publicly. "I'm sure John would have been terribly upset. And he would have expressed his anger and told them (coalition leaders) off for how stupid it is to have to go through this," she said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio before the ceremony and quoted by the Associated Press. "As (Mahatma) Gandhi said, 'An eye for an eye will make us all blind.' We just can't solve problems this way."
  • BBC: Lennon's childhood home opens
  • Daily Telegraph: Imagine a tour of Lennon's home
  • London Times: Beat goes on in Lennon's childhood home
  • AP: Ono opens Lennon's childhood home to public
    (Thanks to Rob Leonard, Sylvia, Ian Swan and Ingrid McNamara.)

    Update (2/15/03)

  • JamMusic: Lennon's early home opens to public

    Update II (2/14/03)

  • Ananova reports the home will open to tours in March.

    Update (1/30/03)

  • Only 90 people a day will be allowed into the Lennon Mendips house once it opens for public viewing, reports IC Liverpool. Only six tours with a maximum of 15 people per group will be given each day. Tours begin in the spring. (Thanks to Trini Schultz.)

    Update (1/10/03)
  • You can find links for the websites for both the Lennon Mendips house and the McCartney Forthlin Road house at http://www.spekehall.org.uk/. (Thanks to Jackie at Live@pool Tours.)

    Update II (1/8/03)

  • More than 20 people have applied for the job looking after Mendips, John Lennon's childhood home, which will be opening to public tours, reports Ananova. The National Trust will begin tours in March. Combined tours of both it and Sir Paul McCartney's boyhood home in nearby Forthlin Road will be offered.

    Update (11/30/02)

  • Neighbors living in the area of the Menlove Ave. home that John Lennon called a childhood home will see the effect visiting tourists could have on their area when they pay a visit to the McCartney home on Forthlin Road this weekend, reports IC Liverpool. The visit will demonstrate how the Forthlin Road home, also part of the National Trusts, handles tourists visits. One difference between Forthlin and Menlove Ave. is that the Menlove Ave. neighborhood has a greater distance between its neighbors. The Menlove home opens to visitors in the spring.

    Update (3/18/02)

  • Electronic Telegraph: Yoko steps into Lennon's childhood

    Update (3/16/02)

  • Hello Magazine: Yoko buys John Lennon's childhood home

    (3/15/02)
    Yoko Ono has purchased John Lennon's childhood home at 251 Menlove Avenue in Liverpool and donated the home to the National Trust. The BBC reports she worked anonymously through a third party and was "thrilled" at the purchase, which reportedly cost more than £150,000. Yoko said, "I am thrilled that we have managed to buy John's main childhood home. It is especially pleasing that we will be able to keep such an important part of John's and The Beatles' history intact and out of the hands of unsympathetic private developers. I think Menlove Avenue has an important place in Beatles history and it saddened me to think that it might be lost. The fact that this is happening in the same week that Liverpool Airport is officially opened as Liverpool John Lennon Airport would have made my husband very happy." A private foreign company was said to be interested in the house, and it was also feared someone with no music interest would buy it. Yoko will unveil a statue of Lennon at Liverpool John Lennon Airport on Friday. (Thanks to Jean Catharell, Dave Harper, Joe Caldwell, Mary Gallagher, Jack C. and raph.)

  • Ananova: Yoko saves Lennon's childhood home for the nation
    This news item copyright Abbeyrd's Beatles Page