Woodside, Old Windsor
Woodside was originally built in the 1500s for Henry VIII's surgeon, the site chosen so that the occupant could be summoned by an emergency flag flown at Windsor Castle.
By 1755 Hammersley had rebuilt the house in the fashionable Gothic revival style and laid out extensive plantings of shrubberies and flower gardens around the property.
The advertisement described a "substantial mansion of the Elizabethan style of architecture" situated in a small park "studded with venerable old oaks and other valuable timber".
The estate was listed at 122 acres (49 ha) including a small farm, "walled gardens, beautiful pleasure rounds, a conservatory, an ornamental cottage residence and farmhouse buildings".
[10] Lady Julia's obituary in The Times wrote of her that "She never used a telephone or drove in a car, and her house, the largest in the village, was lit with oil lamps".
John also owns an apartment in Atlanta, Georgia, a villa near Nice on the French Cote d'Azur and a house in London's Holland Park district.
[1][12] John bought the house for £400,000 in 1974 (£5,265,382 at current prices) and subsequently brought in his collections of what the music writer Mick Brown described as 'High Rock'n'Roll Empire', including "jukeboxes and pinball machines; Tiffany lamps and art deco nymphs; red leather sofas; the odd Rembrandt etching; a disco; [and] a replica of Tutankhamun's state throne".
[14] John decided to refurbish and redesign Woodside after overcoming drink and drug addictions in the late 1980s, feeling that he "didn't want to be a middle-aged man who was a parody of his younger self" and that the house contained "a lot of kitsch ...it was more of an Aladdin's cave than a home.
"[1] The subsequent redesign and refurbishment of the house was begun in 1989 and took three years initially whilst John was on tour supporting his then current album Sleeping With The Past.
It was carried out by Adrian Cooper-Grigg and Andrew Protheroe, with the proviso that they should attempt to create an English country house that resembled the seat of a well established family with their objects accumulated over successive generations.
[1] Brown described the interior decoration on his 2010 visit as consisting of "capacious sofas – an aura of Aubusson, cut moquette, damask – and deep carpets.
"[13] The restrictions on building materials after the Second World War meant that Woodside's ceilings are comparatively low at only 8 feet 6 inches (2.6 m), and to increase the perceived height of the rooms Cooper-Grigg and Protheroe added columns and mouldings and allowed draperies to pool on the floor.
[1] The indoor swimming pool was redesigned to resemble an ancient Roman bath and the front entrance was designed to highlight the enfilade that centres on a gazebo and waterfall in the gardens.
[12] Viscount Linley designed a marquetry screen that surrounds the bed in the master bedroom, and a chest of drawers in which some of John's collection of hundreds of spectacles are kept.
Verey's biographer, Barbara Paul Robinson, felt that working for John with his large annual expenditure on Woodside was a welcome change for her since she had become used to clients who complained about costs.
[22] Daisy was moved into the woodland by helicopter when the gardens were redesigned; she was a present to John from Ringo Starr[1] (other sources say George Harrison or Paul McCartney[22][2]).
