Met a lady last weekend who was a pupil at St George’s C of E Primary School in Battersea in the early '70s, and she was telling me that when they played in the playground they used to listen to a very loud rock band who used to record and rehearse in the old church hall across the road.
That band was “The Who”, and they owned the church hall and called it “Ramport Studios”. It was there that they recorded almost all of their material from the '70s, including Quadrophrenia.
This is Ramport, and if you turn around 180 degrees, you will see the school. More about Ramport here.
I’m sure Pete Townsend’s decision to site his recording studio right opposite a primary school was entirely innocent… :ermm:
I had already known of Ramport as I used to live in nearby Beattie House and did some research on this interesting-looking property, and was amazed to discover the Who connection.
Once the receptionist at the doctor’s surgery (who now occupies it) let me in to the former recording studio area, and it was an incredible experience, very little had changed since it had stopped being used as a studio, in fact that whole space was completely unused! This was about 6 years ago - it was much as you see in the video below, filmed some 26 years earlier…
The Who sold it to Virgin in the early '80s and it became “Townhouse III Studios”, and lots of other well-known bands recorded there including the Sex Pistols, Judas Priest and Supertramp.