A Memory for a Friend from Wales

 

A friend told me a story yesterday and said she had others and wanted to start writing them down. Well, her story has been tossing around in my head and though I didn’t take notes I can get her started.

The story goes that when this woman was just a young girl, she had an affinity for horses. And not too far from her Welsh home was Sylvia Gardner’s Riding School and stables on a large horse farm in Monmouth, Wales. The farm was about a mile off the paved road.

A little back story on the farm. The farm was originally part of a family’s home The Hendre a Victorian Gothic country home owned by Rolls Family. The Victorian country home is now the Rolls of Monmouth Golf Club clubhouse. If you are wondering yes, it is the Rolls of Rolls Royce that we are talking about.  The Golf Club commemorates the aviation and motor pioneer Charles Stewart Rolls. Charles was the first Brit to be killed in a powered aircraft aviation accident. He was flying his Wright Flyer and the tail broke off. He was only 32 years old. The land was passed on to his sister and then in 1958, the Amberly Court Farm was sold to the Ward family dairy farmers. 

The Ward family had two sons Charles and Kingsley and at that time they and a lot of other young people were into that new Rock and Roll music. These two learned to play music and sing and started a band called the Charles Kingsley Combo, one of the first Rock and Roll bands in Wales. The two had to travel to London, first to EMI recording house but they were told to come back with more material in 6 months. Then they were spotted by Joe Meek a record producer in London but since the brothers were still working the farm it was hard to travel back and forth to London 140 miles but back then before there were highways this was quite a long slow drive.

 In 1961 the brothers then came up with the idea of creating a recording studio in the attic of their parent's home. As they grew they moved the studio to the upstairs of a grain storage building and began recording under the name Future Sounds Limited. They later moved the studio downstairs in the grain building now known as the Coach House Studio.  In 1973 they also converted a stable to a studio now called The Quadrangle Studio. 

This is a house of firsts because one of the first groups to record there was an American group Elephant’s Memory from New York (later known for backing up John Lennon and Yoko Ono) the Ward parents let the group stay at their house, the first Residential Recording Studio.  The property is now known as Rockfield Studios and is still a Residential Studio.

Now the part that she remembered was later in the 1970s Queen recorded at the Rockfield Studios. They were one of the first groups to use The Quadrangle studio. Recording in 1973 hits like Killer Queen and in 1974 yes, you guessed it Bohemian Rhapsody. 

But from such humble beginnings did these Welsh brothers and my friend come. I think it is pretty cool that not far from where she grew up were such geniuses as an inventor like Charles Rolls and the ingenuity of two brothers trying to make a dream come true. And she is pretty amazing on her own right.

Other bands that have recorded at the Rockfield Studios you may have heard of Adam and the Ants, Robert Plant, Coldplay, Rush, Annie Lennox, Blonde a regular who's who or Rock n Roll. 

Photos from the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments and the Rolls of Monmouth Golf Club.