Zeppelin Mysteries Hosted by Steve A. Jones

[longdistancewinner]

Jimmy outbid David Bowie for Tower House in June 1973. He purchased it from the actor Richard Harris. More Page-Burges trivia:

December 1972

Whilst touring with Led Zeppelin in Cardiff Jimmy knocked on the door of Cardiff Castle, a William Burges-interior designed landmark but he could not enter as it is was closed

for renovations.

May 27 2002

Jimmy opened a Burges room exhibit at Knighthayes Court near Devon, England for which Jimmy lent a Victorian Gothic wardrobe from his personal collection for three months.

May 19 2004

Jimmy returned to Cardiff Castle for a book launch at the request of Matthew Williams, curator of the castle and author of a William Burges book with Jimmy's cooperation.

October 6 2005

Jimmy opened a William Burges exhibition called "Conserving the Dream - Treasures of St. Fin Barre's Catheral" in Cork, Ireland.

The gardens of Jimmy's home in the Thames Valley were designed by William Burges.

Thanks for that Steve, was only going by what Wiki said (hence the 'I think' bit). Interesting info.

[Medhb]

If I'm not mistaken, this was originally posted on another board by PhotonBeam, who was the laser operator on the 1977 tour?

Ahhh, PhotonBeam, yes, that makes total sense!

[SteveAJones]

BBC News May 20 2004

Rock legend's pilgrimage to castle

Former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page has paid a visit to one of Wales' most famous landmarks after a 31-year wait.

Page was invited to Cardiff Castle after his contribution to a new book about the architect William Burges, who transformed the castle's interior.

A fan of the Victorian architect's work, Page lives in the house which Burges designed for himself in London and allowed it to be featured in a new book on Burges.

Page paid his last visit to the castle more than 30 years ago when his band played in the city, but he was not allowed inside.

"I was beating on the door in 1973, when I was playing in Led Zeppelin," he said.

"We were staying in the Angel Hotel and it was tantalisingly close, but they were doing it up or something at the time and I couldn't get in."

'Wonderful world'

Page added that his love for Burges' work began as a teenager.

"I had an interest going back to my teens in the pre-Raphaelite movement and the architecture of Burges," he said.

"What a wonderful world to discover."

In 1972, he bought Burges' London residence, The Tower House, which carries the architect's trademark attention to detail.

Page contributed to the book on Burges by Matthew Williams

"I was still finding things 20 years after being there - a little beetle on the wall or something like that," Page said.

"It's Burges' attention to detail that is so fascinating."

Tower House is the only property designed by Burges which is currently not open to the public.

But after hearing a request from Cardiff castle curator Matthew Williams, Page allowed pictures of his home to be featured in the new book, called William Burges, written by Mr Williams.

"If you have the privilege of living in a house like this and find someone else who is just as passionate about it, of course you want to help," said Page.

Extravagant designs

Mr Williams said he wanted to write a book about Burges' work and was thrilled when Page allowed him to photograph rooms of Tower House.

"The book took about eight months to complete and a lot of research went into it as well as trying to get pictures of his work," Mr Williams added.

"Jimmy Page was very good and let us into his home to take pictures, and it is really nice to see those pictures in the book because Tower House isn't open to the public.

"The last book on Burges was written 23 years ago and it was quite an in-depth book, so I wanted to create a book which would be a lot more accessible to people."

The reputation of William Burges (1827-1881) rests on his extravagant designs and his contribution to the Gothic revival in architecture in the nineteenth century.

As well as Cardiff Castle and Tower House, Burges designed the lavish interior of Castell Coch, on the outskirts of Cardiff.

Jimmy Page relaxing at Cardiff Castle

Jimmy Page and Matthew Williams

[SteveAJones]

Thanks for that Steve, was only going by what Wiki said (hence the 'I think' bit). Interesting info.

I'm almost certain it was June 1973 while he was on a mid-tour break. In the article

above he discusses staying at the Angel Hotel in Cardiff and attempting to get into

Cardiff Castle in 1973, but they actually stayed at the Angel Hotel and performed in Cardiff on December 12 1972.

Oh, about the Thames Valley mansion - it was designed by architect Edwin Lutyens,

another favorite of his, with a Gertrude Jekyll-designed garden. Apologies for typo.

MISS GERTRUDE JEKYLL

The Times 10th December 1932

Gardener and Artist

We regret to announce that Miss Gertrude Jekyll died at her home at Godalming on Thursday evening, at the age of 89. She had been failing for some weeks and had felt the recent death of her brother, Sir Herbert Jekyll, very much. She was a great gardener, second only, if indeed she was second, to her friend William Robinson, of Gravetye. To these two, more than to any others, are due, not only the complete transformation of English horticultural method and design, but also that wide diffusion of knowledge and taste which has made us almost a nation of gardeners. Miss Jekyll was also a true artist with an exquisite sense of colour.

She was born on November 29, 1843, at 2, Grafton Street, the fourth child and second daughter of Edward Jekyll, captain in the Grenadier Guards, and Julia, née Hammersley. In 1848 the family moved to Bramley House, Surrey, and there she developed a strong interest in botany and gardening, in horses and all country pursuits, and especially in painting. About 1861 she began to study in the art schools in South Kensington, and in 1866 she worked in Paris. Later the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Louvre, the Brera, and the galleries of Venice and Rome offered her invaluable opportunity and experience.

A succession of German and French governesses of the early Victorian type left no more than a resentful impression on her independent mind and character. A brief incursion into boarding school life only deepened her sense of aloofness, and yet no one had a kinder heart, a more truly helpful and sympathetic spirit, a readier sense of humour and good comradeship. Not that her home circle was narrow, or wanting in intellectual or artistic opportunity. Her mother was a good musician, and Mendelssohn was a constant visitor at her London home. Leighton, Watts, and Poynter, among many others, gave help and encouragement to the young artist.

An early acquaintance with Charles Newton, then Keeper of the Greek and Roman collections in the British Museum, led to a fruitful friendship with him and his wife, Mary Severn, with whom, in 1863, she visited Rhodes, Constantinople, and Athens and acquired a knowledge of Greek art. While in Italy she obtained practical instruction in several handicrafts, such as the use of gesso, watergilding, inlaying, repoussé work, and wood-carving. Indeed, there was little her skilful fingers could not bring to perfection, from a piece of finely wrought decorative silver down to the making of her gardening boots. She could toss an omelette and brew Turkish coffee or elderberry wine, compose a liqueur, or manufacture her own incomporable pot-pourri. Embroideries designed by herself, repairs to ancient church work so skilful that they amounted to creation, patchworks of intricate pattern, quilting of medieval fineness, shell pictures such as only a real artist could conceive, banner-making for philanthropic friends, village-inn signs for Surrey neighbours – all were achieved with equal skill and enjoyment.

In 1871 Miss Jekyll formed an enduring frienship with Jacques Blumenthal and his wife, he a musician of distinction, she unusually gifted in all manner of minor arts. Their famous hospitalities in London and at their lovely chalet above Montreux brought her into happy relations with many artists, musicians and social notabilities. Another inspiring friend of the seventies was Hercules Brabazon, who profoundly impressed a small circle in those days, but whose wide recognition only came after he had laid down his brush. He introduced Miss Jekyll to Mme. Bodichon (Barbara Leigh Smith), a gifted painter, but better known in connexion with Girton College. Together they spent a happy winter in 1873-74 in Algiers and there making friends with the artist Frederick Walker.

A Centre of Enthusiasts

Her father’s death in 1876 at Wargrave Hill, Henley, led to the return of the family to West Surrey, and there Miss Jekyll settled with her mother in a house they built on Munstead Hill, above Godalming, in 1878. This soon became a meeting ground for a group of enthusiastic gardeners, amateur and professional, who helped her in the pursuit which henceforward was to be her main employment and delight. House decoration and furnishing, of which her most extensive work was done at Eaton Hall in 1882, had already for some years occupied and interested her, but these activities waned as her horticultural knowledge and taste developed.

In 1882 Canon Hole, afterwards Dean of Rochester, for ever pre-eminent among rose growers, brought with him on a visit to Munstead House Mr. William Robinson, who in his championship of hardy flowers versus the prevailing bedding-out system, found in Miss Jekyll an enthusiastic fellow-worker. Their activities were soon shared by a remarkable group of ardent amateurs, all busy re-discovering neglected plants and popularising better ways of gardening. The disability of restricted sight, which had prevented Miss Jekyll from painting pictures with brushes, was by the law of compensation turned into an unexpected development of painting living pictures with growing plants. The late Mr. Lathbury first induced her to write for his paper, the Guardian, and she expanded her articles into a book, “Wood and Garden,” published in 1899. This was followed in 1900 by “Home and Garden,” and in the ensuing years by other books on “Lilies,” “Wall and Water Gardens,” “Children’s Gardening,” “Colour Schemes for the Garden,” and “Flower Arrangements,” besides one entitled “Old West Surrey,” embodying recollections of bygone country ways, to be re-issued, with amplification, in 1925, under the title of “Old English Household Life.” All these books were copiously illustrated with photographs, taken and developed by Miss Jekyll’s own hand.

From the beginning of 1900, when the Garden newspaper became the property of Country Life, Miss Jekyll undertook its co-editorship with Mr. Ernest Cook, and only relinquished it after 2½ years owing to the strain on her eyesight. But her interest in garden schemes, her own horticultural work including the distribution through the trade of improved strains of some of her favourite flowers, the recapture of many sweet and almost vanished climbing roses and garden plants, and the planning and beautifying of gardens of all sorts and sizes, went on to the end of her life.

From 1895, when her mother died, onwards, this work was carried out from her own home at Munstead Wood, where she had made herself, with the help of Sir Edwin Lutyens, who had begun his professional career in her workshop in the early eighties, the home of her delight, surrounded by some 15 acres of typical Surrey woodland. In that year she was gratified to receive from the Royal Horticultural Society the Victorian medal of honour, just then instituted, and again in February, 1929, the Veitchian gold cup and 50 guineas prize. In later years she kept in touch by correspondence with her numerous clients and private friends, and with a widening circle at home and oversea, attracted by her writings. To her correspondents, enthusiastic, but often horticulturally inexperienced, she owed many a humorous twinkle and quiet chuckle. “Could you spare me some of those lovely flowers I saw in your garden last time I came; I think you called them Peacocks?” Some moments of hard thinking ensued, and a parcel of Narcissus Pallidus Praecox was presently dispatched with an informative postscript. “What is the aspect of the flower border you asked me to plan?” inquired Miss Jekyll of an enthusiastic correspondent, who baffled her by replying, “Most of the day it faces south-east, but due north all the morning.”

In the House of Nature there are many mansions, inhabited by widely divergent spirits. Darwin and Wallace took continents and oceans as their laboratories wherein to study strange and living creations; Wordsworth and Tennyson, lifting their eyes to the hills and the sky, discoursed of religion and philosophy. Gertrude Jekyll, to whom we now bid a grateful “Hail and Farewell,” sought ever for practical knowledge allied to beauty, and in that quest, whereby she may truly be said to have transfigured the gardens of England, she never grew old at heart or wearied in mind, was never discouraged by difficulty or defeated by failure, neither did she cease to share widely the fruits of her long and loving apprenticeship to Nature.

Edited September 27, 2008 by SteveAJones

[SteveAJones]

Tower House

[Medhb]

Tower House

Tower House is an stunningly beautiful home! SAJ, would you happen to have any details such as square footage, number of bedrooms and baths and what other rooms the house contains? I would assume a library, a parlor, etc. I love old home, I'd really enjoy hearing about those details!

TIA!

[longdistancewinner]

Tower House

Oh my. Isn't that stunning? I'd be too afraid to live in it for fear of ruining everything.

[Aquamarine]

The notes read:

Harmonizer into sonic wave

Bow <strobed?> overhead leading into first bowed chords and appearance of pyramid

Staccato repeat (pyramid turns 1/4)

Repeat speed up and pyramid revolves and stops when I start on the wah-wah

Smoke on the back of pyramid

More high and low wah-wah notes leading to more staccato

Repeats ending with bow waves strobeing above my head

Pyramid builds to a spin even before drum entrance

<Tremedor?> on high chord - slide down <black?>

Can anyone confirm or decypher the words in <bold?>?

Cool shit by the way, thanks for posting Steve!

I think the word at bottom left is "tremeloe", could be wrong. Others look correct.

[SteveAJones]

Tower House is an stunningly beautiful home! SAJ, would you happen to have any details such as square footage, number of bedrooms and baths and what other rooms the house contains? I would assume a library, a parlor, etc. I love old homes, I'd really enjoy hearing about those details!

TIA!

I do but as it is Jimmy's private residence I respectfully will not divulge that information.

All interior photographs posted above were specifically authorized for public viewing.

[SteveAJones]

The notes read:

Harmonizer into sonic wave

Bow <strobed?> overhead leading into first bowed chords and appearance of pyramid

Staccato repeat (pyramid turns 1/4)

Repeat speed up and pyramid revolves and stops when I start on the wah-wah

Smoke on the back of pyramid

More high and low wah-wah notes leading to more staccato

Repeats ending with bow waves strobeing above my head

Pyramid builds to a spin even before drum entrance

<Tremedor?> on high chord - slide down <black?>

Can anyone confirm or decypher the words in <bold?>?

[kabbalahone]

Oh my. Isn't that stunning? I'd be too afraid to live in it for fear of ruining everything.

Are you kidding? I'd be in heaven.

Brings back all the memories of my decorative painting days

ahhhh. And the furnishings...

And the owner.... lol

I wonder if he has lilacs in the yard

[Mernie]

Those photos are absolutely gorgeous!

[Zepaholic]

Tower House

No big deal, my house looks better than that.......NOT

Fabulous pics.

[kabbalahone]

Jimmy Page relaxing at Cardiff Castle

Jimmy Page and Matthew Williams

I'm freaking out. I just checked out Cardiff on Wikipedia

They've got an Arab room. It's spectacular.

Well, maybe if the arabs never let me into the Dome in Jerusalem

Maybe I can see Cardiff's Arab Room instead.

[kabbalahone]

The Arab Room in Cardiff Castle

My heart is pounding like crazy.

[Medhb]

I do but as it is Jimmy's private residence I respectfully will not divulge that information.

All interior photographs posted above were specifically authorized for public viewing.

No problem, as an admirer of Burges' work I'll just buy the Williams book, I'm sure that the details I'm curious about will be found there.

[One Symbol]

Tower House

Stunning. Thanks for posting, Steve!

[Medhb]

Another shot of the Tower House in what I would assume to be a ballroom

And if you appreciate Burges' works these are really cool shots of the staircases in St. Mary's Church

and a MUST see!! Scroll down to view panoramics of Burges' work on St. Michael and All Angels Cathedral

Enjoy!!

[James McGregor]

Are there any other photos of homes currently or previously owned by Zep members? I heard once that Peter Grants country estate was fabulous.

Funny question also. At one time, I think all of Zep smoked cigarettes. Aside from Page, do the remaining members smoke, and does Jason?

[LedZep1969]

did robert finally agree? http://winnipegsun.com/Entertainment/Music...899896-sun.html

[kabbalahone]

Another shot of the Tower House in what I would assume to be a ballroom

And if you appreciate Burges' works these are really cool shots of the staircases in St. Mary's Church

Enjoy!!

Do you mind if I say, I love you!!!

Thanks so much for the staircase pic.

I've been meaning to tell you for a while, I love your sig file.

My baby pic with my white knitted dress with the two huge pom poms always has me saying...

I've got balls. great big balls, lol

I should also mention, this is strange and exciting...

there is a man in Halifax who looks a lot like Charles Manson did in his craziest times...

but you know what this guy does?

He helps crippled people out of their cars into St. Mary's Basilica.

Edited September 27, 2008 by kabbalahone

[Medhb]

Do you mind if I say, I love you!!!

Thanks so much for the staircase pic.

I've been meaning to tell you for a while, I love your sig file.

My baby pic with my white knitted dress with the two huge pom poms always has me saying...

I've got balls. great big balls, lol

I should also mention, this is strange and exciting...

there is a man in Halifax who looks a lot like Charles Manson did in his craziest times...

but you know what this guy does?

He helps crippled people out of their cars into St. Mary's Basilica.

Awwww, thank you sweetheart!! That was a wondrous shot you posted of the Arab room too. Almost makes you dizzy doesn't it? The detail that Burges designed is incredibly microscopic and palatial at the same time.

Ahhhhh, that is funny! You're going to St. Mary's Basilica and what looks like a crazed mass murderer comes to assist you to out of your car....must be a joltingly pleasant surprise, LOL!

[dave2007]

I do but as it is Jimmy's private residence I respectfully will not divulge that information.

All interior photographs posted above were specifically authorized for public viewing.

Also, there is the BBC Open University 'Arts and History' TV programme which features a tour of Tower House. It's been shown often on TV....it even credits Jimmy at the end. I have it on video....shame I only have a DVD player these days.

[kabbalahone]

Awwww, thank you sweetheart!! That was a wondrous shot you posted of the Arab room too. Almost makes you dizzy doesn't it? The detail that Burges designed is incredibly microscopic and palatial at the same time.

Ahhhhh, that is funny! You're going to St. Mary's Basilica and what looks like a crazed mass murderer comes to assist you to out of your car....must be a joltingly pleasant surprise, LOL!

You know, I never examined the faces of any of the people he's helped to see if they have noticed,

but a few other people I know also see the resemblance.

Here is one of my favorite pics. Stephen Wolfram (mathematica) on a spiral staircase. I am a Wolfram on my mother's side. My mom says there aren't very many of us left in the world.

[Medhb]

Also, there is the BBC Open University 'Arts and History' TV programme which features a tour of Tower House. It's been shown often on TV....it even credits Jimmy at the end. I have it on video....shame I only have a DVD player these days.

Awesome!! I'll have to see if our library has that. Luckily, the last telly I purchased has a DVD and a VHS player in it. I knew that VHS players were rapidly going away and I wanted to ensure I could still view my tapes.

Thanks for that info! It was really magnanimous of Jimmy to open the house to those who are interested in Burges' works. He appreciates fellow appreciators