Tittenhurst park: Memorabilia

Top of the Pops in the memorabilia business: Tittenhurst Park


A white door from The White Room at Tittenhurst Park.

A girl who swapped her sweater for a classmate's notepad in 1956 is set to make a fortune from the deal. The teenage student who fancied her new yellow pullover was John Lennon, the cerebral Beatle. Now the notebook, containing cruel caricatures of Lennon's teachers, is on sale - at a London memorabilia. Fifteen years ago Lennon's sweater-girl, now a successful businesswoman, decided to part with two of his sketches, putting them up for auction. A shrewd investor bought them for pounds 8,000 each and resold them within days for £16,000 apiece to a Swedish buyer. The woman, who does not want to be named, told a reporter: 'John and I were really good friends. We sat next to each other in art class and I admired his work. He was not a Beatle then, but I knew he was talented. I asked him for some drawings and he said I could have the notebook provided I gave him my sweater.' Now, 38 years later, she is offering the book for sale with some reluctance. 'It means a great deal to me, but I have had to keep it in a bank vault. The ideal solution would be if a museum or gallery bought it for public display.'

Even old doors and wash-basins from the late Beatle's former home are a lucrative investment. When collectors had a tip-off that an Arab sheikh had bought and was refurbishing Tittenhurst Park, they rushed to Berkshire in the hope of salvaging recording materials.

They were too late. 'The builders told me 'Oh it's a pity you were not here last week, we put all the rubbish from the recording studio in the swimming pool and burned it'. I was horrified, who knows what was lost. Instead of recording equipment, he came away with 14 doors, for £25 each, which he sold for £400 each to buyers from the States, Japan and Europe. A wash-basin went on sale for £1,000. Morbid fascination with dead musicians and ageing living rockers is an odd business idea. One of the world’s best collection houses, Vinyl Experience produced a top ten memorabilia of their sales 1994:

1. George Harrison's Aston Martin 'James Bond' car: £32,000.
2. Drawing by John Lennon 1956: £16,000.
3. Harrison's Mercedes 4-door coupe: £10,000.
4. Original document of Lennon's court appearance on possession of cannabis resin, 1969: £4,000.
5. pounds 30 cheque payable to Eric Easton for Rolling Stones' first performance at Richmond jazz festival: £3,500.
6. Set of Beatles' signatures with photograph of them signing the paper, framed and glazed: £2,200.
7. Rolling Stones' pinball machine that plays 'Satisfaction': £2,000.
8. Sheet of hand-written Jimi Hendrix lyrics: £2,000.
9. Madonna's gold lame top from the film Whose That Girl and photo of her wearing same top: £2,500.
10. Lennon's round bathtub from Tittenhurst Park: £1,200.