"We were just knocking about in the park. Then the Beatles turned up"

‘We were just knocking about in the park. Then the Beatles turned up’ https://t.co/U1GnGcZ3mi

— The Guardian (@guardian) August 18, 2017

Intrigued by the story of the Beatles' photoshoot at Old St Pancras, I did some googling and found a piece in the Guardian by one of the children pictured with them.

Ian Whittington writes:

I’m the little boy on the left in the light blue jumper, and I’m six years old. Standing next to me is my younger brother Neil and behind us is our nan, Eunice. She’s holding paper and a pencil, as we got three of the Beatles’ autographs. Yoko Ono, who was there that day, kept calling John Lennon away, so we only got Paul, George and Ringo’s signatures ...

There was no announcement that the Beatles were coming – they just turned up, with a small group of friends, assistants, photographers and hangers-on. The other kids were just knocking about in the park that day, as we were. King’s Cross and St Pancras was a poor area then; parts of it were Dickensian. According to my nan, I sat on Paul’s knee. At one point, she brought them out tea.

Yoko, eh?

Whittington was the grandson of the head gardener at Old St Pancras:

He was visiting family in Derbyshire that day: he always said if he had been there, he wouldn’t have allowed the Beatles in, because they were the sort of "long-haired layabouts" he disapproved of.

And he remembers that the site was more impressive in 1968 than it is today:

It was a beautiful park, much bigger than it is now. There was a Victorian bedding scheme, which my grandad was very proud of, a fountain, glasshouses, a playground, London plane trees. Sir John Soane’s mausoleum is there. In one famous picture, the Beatles are posing among my grandad’s prize hollyhocks. He had eight or nine staff, some of them in this photograph – the older man in the trilby at the back was the park keeper. 

It's hard not to conclude that Swinging London caught the city at a sweet point between authority and liberation. Much of its iconography involved symbols of tradition like bobbies and red buses - the flower children could play because there were still grown ups in charge.

Ian Whittington also says that:

A black and white version of this photograph, by another photographer who was there called Stephen Goldblatt (although it’s often attributed to McCullin), features on the inside gatefold sleeve of two Beatles compilation albums: the Red Album, from 1962-1966, and the Blue Album, from 1967–1970. I’ve no idea why it was chosen: I suppose it’s nice the way they are mingling with the crowd, looking like normal people. 

I first saw it on one of the records at a girlfriend’s flat when I was 16: I said, "That’s my nan!" And then, a few seconds later, "That’s me!"

I remember coveting those two albums when I was 12 and not being able to afford them. I could buy them now with a couple of clicks, but somehow the Beatles interest me less than other 60s bands today.