Wimpole Street: The Barretts and the Beatles
Why is it significant?
You are standing in Wimpole Street: tall brick and stucco terraces, polished brass plates for dentists and consultants, a hush of money and medicine. Two love stories happened on this short stretch, a century apart, and both changed the history of words and music.
Key Facts
| Place | Wimpole Street: The Barretts and the Beatles |
|---|---|
| Address | 57 Wimpole Street, London W1G 8YW, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.51880, -0.14810 |
| Part of Walk | From 221B to Wimpole Street: Sherlock Holmes, Dickens and the Beatles in Marylebone, London |
| Generated | Generated |
You are standing in Wimpole Street: tall brick and stucco terraces, polished brass plates for dentists and consultants, a hush of money and medicine. Two love stories happened on this short stretch, a century apart, and both changed the history of words and music.
At number 50 lived the Barrett family. Elizabeth Barrett, already a celebrated poet, was an invalid who rarely left her upstairs room, ruled by a father who had forbidden all his children to marry. In January 1845 a younger poet, Robert Browning, wrote to her: I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett. Hundreds of letters followed, then secret visits, then the wedding you heard about at St Marylebone. Her house was later rebuilt, but a plaque on its successor remembers her.
There was a third member of that household who became famous: Flush, her red cocker spaniel. He was stolen three times by the dog thieves of Victorian London, and every time she paid the ransom. Nearly a century later, Virginia Woolf wrote his life story, a biography told through a dog's nose.
Now walk a few doors along to number 57. In late 1963 a twenty-one-year-old Paul McCartney moved into the attic here, the home of his girlfriend, the actress Jane Asher, and her family. In the basement music room, John Lennon and Paul sat side by side at the piano and wrote I Want to Hold Your Hand, the song that soon took the Beatles to the top of the American charts.
And one morning, in that small room at the top of the house, McCartney woke with a complete melody in his head. Convinced he must have heard it somewhere, he played it to friends for weeks, asking if they knew it. Nobody did. He sang it with stand-in words, scrambled eggs, until the real ones came: it was Yesterday. Now continue north along Wimpole Street, across New Cavendish Street, into Upper Wimpole Street.