High Park Farm, Scotland
In June 1966, shortly after moving to Cavendish Avenue, McCartney also bought a farm called High Park Farm on the Kintyre Peninsula in Scotland. Not far from Campbelltown, the farmhouse had three bedrooms and attached 183 acres of land. The farm was largely dilapidated, and renovations only began in 1969 after McCartney married Linda (née Eastman). Then, in 1970, he acquired another farm nearby and in early 1971 an additional 400 acres nearby.
In 2021, McCartney said in an interview that he was inspired to buy a house in Scotland by John Lennon, who had visited relatives who had crofts in the Highlands and spoke highly of the area’s beauty. After the Beatles were advised to invest their money in the property, McCartney realized that the farm might be a good place to buy (as he recalls, it was his accountant who found the farm for him).
The farm was naturally a place for McCartney to escape from fans and press, and he rarely invited any of his bandmates to stay. But it also became a significant part of Wings lore, after McCartney and bandmate Danny Lane wrote ‘Mul of Kintyre’ in tribute to the peninsula that is home to the farm. The single was Wings’ biggest hit in Britain Christmas Number one in 1977 and sold over two million copies.
Blossom Wood Farm, East Sussex
A few years later, in 1973, McCartney bought a 160-acre farm called Blossom Wood, near Rye in East Sussex. By this point, he was married to Linda, and the couple had three daughters—a move to the countryside was natural. And in fact, there were many musicians and artists in the 1970s houses In the Home Counties, especially Surrey and East and West Sussex, which them London. The likes of Keith Moon, Oliver Reed and John Paul Jones owned substantial houses in the strip of countryside around south London.
