Great Linford has certainly had more than its fair share of famous faces pass through, though this is hardly surprising as for many years the Manor House served as a prestigious music recording studio, welcoming some of the top bands and singers in the world. But other names can be associated with the village from the world of show biz and television, some with more certainty than others, and two providing a link to one of the most infamous political scandals in British history!

Diana Dors was an actress and glamour model, whose reputation as a sex symbol and lurid tabloid headlines disguise the fact that she was by all accounts a very accomplished actress, and that but for personal misfortunes and misjudgements, could very easily have secured her reputation as a serious artiste. Her name has come up in conversation often in connection to Great Linford, with older residents remembering her presence, but under exactly what circumstances she was here, and for how long she stayed, is a matter of speculation. What seems relatively certain is that she had a connection to the house known as The Mead.

It has been suggested that she owned The Mead, but it seems more likely that an aunt and uncle were living there in the 1950s or 1960s. Diana’s real surname was Fluck, while her mother’s maiden name was Payne, but neither name can be connected to The Mead. A name sounding something like Gutteridge has also been suggested, but again, a blank is drawn in trying to connect the name to the house. A person who remembers the owners of the house in the 1980s relates the understanding was held that Diana had owned it, and that it was her country get-away, but having run the theories past an expert on Diana Dors, a home in Great Linford is entirely unknown, and given that hers was a very public persona with numerous books written about her (and by her), the lack of evidence for her ownership seems compelling.

But despite the mystery of the ownership of The Mead, it does seem entirely likely from the recollections of residents of Great Linford, that Diana Dors had once turned heads in the village.

​Beginning in 1961, John Profumo, the 46-year-old War Minister in the Conservative government of Harold McMillan, began an affair with a 19-year-old model and exotic dancer named Christine Keeler. At the same time, Keeler had entered into a relationship with an attaché at the Soviet embassy named Yevgeny Ivanov, a state of affairs with clear implications for national security. The exact circumstances behind Keeler’s brief relationship with Ivanov are subject to dispute; Keeler alleges in her biography that she was being set up and the intention was to generate blackmail material so that the Soviets could ascertain NATO nuclear plans in Europe. But what does this have to do with Great Linford?

The circumstances are certainly strange. The suggestion that Christine Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice Davies had visited Great Linford had been offered by a resident who remembered seeing them in the village, but is there any proof? Indirectly there is, and the trail starts at the manor house, which in 1956 had been occupied by a Michael Dibben, an entrepreneurial character who had developed a novel way of making casts of old garden statuary and then turning out copies. His unique selling point was that he had developed a way of cheaply reproducing items with a special concrete formula that simulated the patina of old garden ornaments. Chilstone proved very successful, and the company still exists to this day; you can even still buy “Great Linford” branded items.

But how does this bring us closer to a connection to the Profumo Affair? To join the dots, we need to talk about Michael’s father, Horace Harold Dibben, known as “Hod” to his friends and acquaintances. Hod Dibben was an antique dealer who had made a name for himself as a nightclub owner in London, but his establishments were the more respectable front for the private parties he became infamous for, secret assignations where the rich and famous could shed their inhibitions.  Christine Keeler denied ever attending one of these parties, but Mandy Rice Davies had, and in the highly charged atmosphere both girls inhabited, intrigue and blackmail went hand in hand, as did espionage. 

The name of Hod Dibben is one that exists on the periphery of the Profumo Affair, but it certainly gives credence to the idea that Keeler and Rice-Davies could have visited Great Linford as guests of the Dibbens. This is not to impugn the reputation of Michael Dibben, no concrete evidence points to any shenanigans at the manor, and indeed the story that has bee passed down suggests they stayed at Linford Lodge. Christine Keeler makes no mention of Great Linford in her biography, but perhaps we can speculate that as the Profumo Affair exploded into the public eye, Keeler and Rice-Davies sought a respite from the incessant press attention in a quiet little Buckinghamshire village.

​The tenue of the Dibben family certainly seems to have been a period when the manor was well known to various showbusiness luminaries of the time. It is recalled that the celebrity hairdresser Vidal Sassoon stayed at the manor, as did the actor Ian Hendry, well known for his role in the classic British drama The Avengers. Even more intriguingly, I am reliably informed that another visitor to the manor was Eddie Chapman, a well-known criminal and a wartime double agent, known to his handlers in the intelligence service as Zigzag.

​While on the run from the police, Chapman was caught and imprisoned in Jersey and was still incarcerated there when the Germans invaded in 1940. No doubt sensing an opportunity, Chapman offered his services as a spy and was subsequently parachuted into England, where he promptly handed himself in and turned double agent. After the war, he was involved in a number of businesses, and wrote his autobiography. Exactly what brought him to Great Linford is unknown, but it certainly adds a degree of intrigue to the history of the Manor.

Toward the end of 1969, a television crew descended on a snowy Great Linford to film a gritty crime drama called Suspect, which was to serve as a trial run for a short series called Armchair Cinema for Thames TV. Shot on film, which was an unusual extravagance at the time, Suspect and the stories that followed are well-regarded as programmes that served as a training ground for up-and-coming actors, writers and directors; one episode entitled Regan would be spung off into the immensely popular The Sweeney. Suspect was the work of Mike Hodges, who would go on to critical acclaim for his film Get Carter, which starred Michael Caine. Hodges is also well known for the camp cult classic, Flash Gordon.

Hodges wrote and directed Suspect, which filmed extensively inside the manor house, on the High Street and many other familiar locations in and around the village. The cast was led by Rachel Kempson, a RADA trained actress with many roles on stage and television to her name, including in later years Out of Africa and The Jewel in the Crown. She often co-starred with her husband Michael Redgrave, the couple founding an acting dynasty that included Vanessa Redgrave.

​In Suspect, Rachel   plays Phyllis Segal, who worries that the disappearance of her husband, coinciding with the apparent abduction of a local schoolgirl, must in some way be connected. But when the police arrive, she decides that she must keep up appearances at all costs and does all she can to deflect suspicion from her wayward spouse.

The police are led by Detective Inspector Barnes, played by George Sewell, whose craggy features graced many crime dramas of the period, playing characters on both sides of the law. He may be best remembered as Colonel Alec Freeman in Gerry Anderson’s live action UFO series. In Suspect, Sewell’s detective is a somewhat world-weary character, but determined to get his man. 

Rounding out the main cast is Bryan Marshall, a stalwart of British television, but with roles also in movies like The Long Good Friday and The Spy Who Loved Me. Marshall plays the son of Phylis Segal, returning home to find the family’s life in turmoil.

Suspect is a particularly good crime drama, with plenty of suspense, and it is certainly fascinating to think that the village was once home to a television production of this nature. As of writing, the episode is available on YouTube.

Bill Oddie is a name that immediately brings to mind the phrase “Goody goody yum yum”, evoking his role in the anarchic television comedy, The Goodies. But Oddie has also been a lifelong conservationist, and it was in this capacity that he came to Great Linford in 1990 to help promote the launch of the first door to door recycling scheme in the country. He met locals in Great Linford and was photographed at the launch in the manor grounds.

Nadiya Hussain was catapulted to fame after winning the Great British Bakeoff in 2015 and is now a popular television cookery star. In 2017, she visited Great Linford Manor Park for the first episode of Nadiya's British Food Adventure, which saw her meeting Turan T. Turan, who was then running a food smoking business from one of the pavilions.  The episode is occasionally repeated on the BBC, but as of writing is not available on iPlayer, though it can be purchased via Amazon and Apple TV.

Sadly not all celebrity visits to Great Linford have gone to plan. I am aware that Journalist, producer and TV presenter Dr Michael Mosely visited the park in 2023 to film for his TV series Secrets of your big shop. Sadly, it seems that the footage shot in the park hit the cutting room floor, as there is no sign of any scenes in the episode in question, which was the third in the series, featuring a Milton Keynes couple hoping to improve their eating habits.

Great Linford was once home to a promising tennis player named Jean Gambell. She played at the juniors at Wimbledon in the late 1930s, but her career was cut tragically short when she died aged just 19. Her father Philip Clayton Gambell was an important figure in county tennis, and it is said that as a result, famous tennis players were to be seen playing on a court at the Gambell's home, Linford Lodge. Unfortunately no firm evidence has been found to support this, but you can read more about tennis in Great Linford here.

Arguably saving the best until last, the manor house was home from approximately 1984 to the early 2000s to a recording studio. Bought by music manager Harry Maloney and converted into a residential studio, artists travelled from all over the world to use the facilities, which included digital equipment, making it one of the first studios to use such cutting-edge technology in the UK. In later years, the studio came into the hands of the manor’s present owner, Pete Winkleman. He continued to run the business for some years more, though its days as a recording studio are sadly now over.

Some extremely well-regarded albums were recorded at the manor, amongst which was P.J Harvey’s acclaimed album Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, which was recorded between March and April of 2000. Other big names that passed through Great Linford was John Lydon of Sex Pistols fame, who recorded at the manor with his band PiL, as well as Del Amitri and Babylon Zoo. John Lydon was spotted in the Nag’s Head.

I’ve been told that the artists rather kept themselves to themselves though “Skunk Anansie, Feeder and Jamiroquai were recording during one of the festival times in the park and made appearances either on the Friday in the garden or when the stage was in front of the manor.”

Skunk Anansie offer their recollections of recording at the manor in the video below.

​One band for whom we have photographic evidence of their presence is ELO Part II, portions of whose album Moment of Truth was laid down at the manor in 1994. The band were captured on film at the manor, and having a crafty pint in the Nag’s Head, by photographer Paul Spencer, who has kindly given permission to reproduce the following photographs from the album sleeve. Please visit Paul’s Instagram account here for more great photographs.

Much has been written about the Manor’s days as a recording studio, so rather than repeat this here, I will provide some links for those who are interested to further explore.

The Discogs site provides a very comprehensive looking list of the artists who have recorded from the manor, and using this, I have created a Spotify playlist. It’s not complete as unfortunately not every song is available on Spotify, but if you have an account, you can listen to the Great Linford Manor Spotify playlist by clicking here.

Some rather grainy videos of the manor studio can be viewed on the record production website, and for those with an interest in the technical aspects of a music studio, the same site also has a piece here on one of the consoles used.

Home and Studio Recording Magazine featured an extensive article about the studio in their May 1987 issue, which can be viewed online here.

For an obituary of Harry Maloney, click here and for a general overview of the manor house as a recording studio, click here.

Do you know of any other famous faces who have visited Great Linford, or have stories to tell about the celebrities named above, perhaps even photographs or memorabilia? Please comment below.

With Halloween fast approaching, what better time to go in search of the spooky, the bizarre and the just plain unusual at Great Linford. The obvious starting point is ghost stories, but surprisingly for a village of such antiquity, there seem to be few restless spirits to disturb its peace. The website Spooky Isles offers a first-hand account of an encounter with a spectral girl at the Black Horse Inn and I have heard it suggested that The Nags Head has a resident ghost, but this seems to be the extent of any spectral shenanigans in the parish.

Certainly, one might imagine that the centuries old manor house in the park would be a hotbed of paranormal activity; after all, we even have the required elements for a classic ghost story. Thomas Uthwatt was the Lord of the Manor in the 18th century, but was it seems a conflicted soul, who slit his own throat in 1754. However, there appear to be no reports of his tortured spirit haunting the house.

The old rectory on the other hand can definitely be considered a good candidate for unusual goings on, especially as several of its former residents might reasonably be described as occultists, and in fact the Reverend Richard Napier was once accused of being a conjuror by one of his parishioners. Arriving in Great Linford in 1590, Richard Napier largely abdicated his official responsibilities as the parish priest, and concentrated his efforts on becoming an astrological doctor, drawing up complex horoscopes to divine the source of his patients’ afflictions. Among the more mundane aches, pains and sundry maladies he treated, he also encountered cases that suggested satanic powers at work, such as Thomas Richardson, who consulted Napier on July 14th, 1598, telling the doctor that his wife talked much of the devil and must be bewitched. To learn more about cases of witchcraft he treated, visit the Napier casebook website.

Another resident of the rectory was Theodoricus Gravius, who as a refugee from war in Europe had found sanctuary with Richard Napier, and in due course would succeed him as rector of the parish. He was concerned not only with medicine, but was also engaged in chemical experimentation, complaining that he was unable to retrieve his laboratory equipment from Germany. One cannot help but wonder what fascinating investigations were undertaken within the walls of the rectory, perhaps even attempts to transform lead to gold! It is not difficult to imagine residents of the village looking on with suspicion at odd noises and noxious odours emanating from the rectory.

Speaking of odd smells, in May of 1840, the Northampton Mercury reported on the excavation of a well on the estate of Henry Andrewes Uthwatt, where a “copious and permanent spring had been discovered, strongly impregnated with sulphurated hydrogen gas.” The article goes to say that the water could not be used for cooking purposes, “on account of the fetid odour which it exhales.” The article provides a considered scientific explanation for the phenomenon, but one can imagine that had the spring broke forth in Napier’s time, Great Linford might now be infamous as the location of a gate to hell.

With farming being the predominant source of livelihoods in the parish, it is to be expected that odd stories concerning animals can be found. The newspaper Croydon's Weekly Standard of Saturday November 15th, 1884, featured a sad little tale of a curious deformity that had afflicted a piglet.

GREAT LINFORD. STRANGE FREAK of NATURE. On Sunday last. November 9, a sow belonging to Mr. F. Kemp, of this village, gave birth to a litter of pigs, amongst which was one with two heads, each having ears. eyes, ect., perfect. The curious little animal, in consequence of no one being near at the time, was crushed to death by its dam.

The full name of the owner of the piglet we can identify as likely to have been an engine fitter (doubtless employed at Wolverton Works) named Frederick Kemp, with the unfortunate birth having occurred in the vicinity of the Wharf. The reference to a dam having crushed to death the piglet is a word meaning the female parent. Like the previous story of the stinking well, had such a birth occurred in Napier’s time, it would doubtless have been ascribed to witchcraft, but by the 1800s, such notions had largely been dispelled.

​Minor curiosities of nature seemed a popular item for newspapers, such as an account from January 1869, concerning a shepherd named John Mapley, who was reported to have gathered up two mushrooms of unusual size, the largest measuring six and half images in diameter. Clearly a slow news day.

Several newspapers of December 1886 carry a particular gruesome account of a freak accident that befell a Great Linford resident named Jospeh Fennemore, who was feeding his masters horses when one of them turned on him and bit his nose off. A doctor Rogers of Newport Pagnell attended but Joseph’s condition was considered a bad one, as his nose was bitten off level with his face. However, it seems that he must have rallied, as there is no record of a Joseph Fennemore dying at this time. Unhelpfully, there are two Joseph Fennemores who lived in the village in 1886, one who died in 1897, and his namesake son, who passed in 1912, so which of the two men was so hideously disfigured must remain a mystery.

The village was in need of a Pied Piper in January of 1932, when a huge colony of rats was disturbed at Windmill Hill Farm, having been munching their way through a bean crop stored in the barn, perhaps the one still adjacent to the cricket pitch. Hundreds of rats poured forth, with a veritable massacre occurring over the next two days. Described as “the biggest slaughter of rats on one farm that has been known in North Bucks for many years”, the dead numbered in the region of 700, and “presented a gruesome spectacle laid out in rows in the field adjoining the barn.”

Several reports of the calamitous effects of extreme weather in the parish can be found, including a case from July of 1865, when lightning struck a gang of workers and their horses on the construction site of the Grand Union Canal. The blast almost blinded one of the workers, and two horses were mortally injured. Almost a hundred years later, on Saturday March 1st, 1961, a tornado swept across the parish, having touched down at New Bradwell, before roaring through Great Linford, leaving a trail of damage in its wake. A particularly odd aspect of this story is the claim of one witness at New Bradwell that the tornado had been caused by a fireball he had witnessed pass overhead!

Bad weather could also have its benefits. People who happened to be near the Black Horse inn on December 30th, 1926, were treated to a late Christmas dinner when a flock of partridges were caught up in a gale and crashed into telegraph wires, a total of ten birds falling dead to the ground, all of which were swiftly claimed for the pot.

Under the headline, “Workmen’s Strange Discovery” the Northampton Mercury of March 26th, 1937, reported that a nest of “seven furry little animals” had been uncovered in the timber shed at Wolverton Railway Works, and suspecting they were otters, had requested the presence of William Uthwatt of the manor house, as he was master of the Bucks otter hound pack. On attending, he pronounced that they were not otters, but “some species of the fox tribe”, a rather curiously vague pronouncement from a seasoned huntsman. William took possession of the creatures, and no follow up story appears to have been filed that would clear up the mystery.

Great Linford does have one Halloween tradition. For over a decade, the residents of 16 Wood Lane have been providing a Halloween maze experience, with live actors and plenty of thrills and chills. Further information can be found at halloweenscarymaze.com.