What's going on with Garden Lodge?

I believe the term "Streisand Effect" is useful here. :-)

I work 10 minutes away, I should take a stroll and say Happy Birthday!

Well that is a shame. Mary has taken the wall of tributes perspex down and it looks like the doors are getting fresh paint. Been sold perhaps?

[QUOTE] [b]LOTV wrote:[/b]

Well that is a shame. Mary has taken the wall of tributes perspex down and it looks like the doors are getting fresh paint. Been sold perhaps?[/QUOTE]

If this is the case I hope nobody buys the house and it will become Freddie Mercury Museum or something like that, but it's unlikely :(

I doubt they'd ever sell it. Unlikely unless in future generations the income is somehow squandered and it's utilized as such (a museum).... I suspect something close to that with regard to one of my heroes: Charles Spencer Chaplin, in CHAPLIN WORLD.


One day I intend to visit Vevey Switzerland for that purpose

If you read his will, at the end of the day after the death of Mary and his sister all the money goes to children's charity. I don't think she could sell it. Read it in a David Evan book. Interesting

That house will always stay with Queen.

When you compare the Garden Lodge to Rogers massive estate it is not that grand really.It was just because it gave Freddie the London nightlife which he loved so much.Mary went against a lot of Freddies wishes throwing everybody out like she did when Freddie passed away.

[QUOTE] [b]philip storey wrote:[/b]

Mary went against a lot of Freddies wishes throwing everybody out like she did when Freddie passed away.[/QUOTE]

Which ones exactly?

Jim Hutton and Peter Freestone were told by Freddie they would be able to live at the Garden Lodge, unfortunately it was verbal and not in the will ,so it made it easy for Mary to get them out.Still it was against Freddies wishes but I suppose with everything that was going on ,it was not something to keep going on about ,who gets what when Freddie was going to die.

Mary finally has a sign up with threats of prosecution for graffiti. People need it spelling out, because they will just rock up there and assume it's allowed if they see it. She should have done this ages ago in my opinion. I wonder why it took 25 years!

[QUOTE] [b]captainjory wrote:[/b]

I agree; it's a strange move. I have to say, she seems to be of a petty nature though.
A relative of mine works for RBKC (Kensington council) and says Mary and her ex husband Nick caused a lot of problems with the neighbours, constantly fighting to block various planning permissions and generally throwing their weight around.

Mary seemed to have the idea people wanted to build extensions for the sole purpose of looking into her home and questioned why some houses in the street opposite Garden Lodge had any need to be built at all(!) Her letters were rather smug, snotty and in the manner of a spoiled child, criticising people's gardens and the aesthetics of their architecture! One of the neighbours she was fighting with was Dame Diana Rigg, who lives a couple of streets away.

My relative and colleagues used to say she had let her inheritance go to her head and believed herself to be the Queen of Logan Place.
[/QUOTE]

I've also heard this. Her and her husband's snotty letters to Kensington Council are actually public domain. Freddie's money's definitely gone to her head!

Two years ago, two friends of mine went to slip notes in behind the perspex (they wrote stuff about what Freddie means to them) then they decided to write on the wall. Mary Austin literally saw them do it, walked past right as they were writing on the wall and she said nothing. So this led them to assume the perspex was there for that exact purpose!

Probably not relevant, but they said she is now fat and was wearing a grey tracksuit and loafers, had four inches of grey roots and messy hair "but her face was still the same" lol

Ok it is relevant because many ask whether she still lives there. The answer is yes and she went into the Mews building rather than the main gate

Most probably she lives in Garden Lodge but uses the Mews to get there, because there's a gate that connects both properties. That's a more private way to enter Garden Lodge.