Just want to thank John and his wife for showing me round Roger Taylor's old house in Truro where I went this evening. John kindly showed me several things, including the conveyancing documents which were very interesting. In fact it seems that for 20 years it was the only house on its road, because the other houses were not developed till the 80's.
Roger's Mum and Dad lived there between February 1963 and 1971 ie between those important years when Roger was 14 - 21. The Reaction would have met and rehearsed there and Brian May and Freddie Mercury would have stayed there too when they visited from London and played gigs as Smile and as Queen in Truro.
The house has been done up and has had an extension so it looks different from the outside, but inside there are a number of original 60s fixtures eg a characterful slate fireplace. The bath is also unchanged. Here, for example, are the taps and the original parquet floor marked, no doubt, by Freddie and Roger's wedge heels...
Mark Hodkinson in 'The Early Years' describes this house as a 'large detached house with a badminton court in its grounds'. This sentence is a bit misleading: I'm not sure the current owners would describe it as having 'grounds', for example, and though it was going to be built as a house (ie more than one floor) it is actually a bungalow in the sense of having a single ground floor. More importantly Mark implies that Rogers parents were living separately at the time: but neighbours who remember the family dispute this and say that Mr Taylor lived there too.
Update 15/6/10: Mike Grose remembers rehearsing with Roger before 1971 in Treyew Road - so his mother must have moved before then.
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