Linford Manor

Linford Manor, also known as Great Linford Manor, is a seventeenth-century mansion or manor house converted into a recording studio complex in Great Linford, a district in Milton Keynes, England. It is now owned by Pete Winkelman who is chairman of Milton Keynes Dons football club.

The current manor was originally built in 1678 by Sir William Pritchard on land bought from the Napier family on the site of an older medieval manor. In 1704 the manor passed to the Uthwatts, his relatives, and extended the house over time. It was originally the manor of Little Linford as well as of Great Linford.

The four descending ponds are fed by springs that still flow today. Two of the ponds exist on the Manor side of the Grand Union Canal, a third was destroyed during construction and the fourth is still extant on the Railway Path side of the canal and can be accessed via steps from that pathway.

In 1972 the Manor was bought by Milton Keynes Development Corporation to be an arts centre but was closed in 1984.

In 1984/85 Harry Maloney bought the manor and converted it into a residential recording studio. The main studio housed a 48 channel/56 frame SSL recording/mixing desk, and was one of the first UK studios to invest in digital recording. Accommodation for artists and producers was offered upstairs in the manor house. A second studio was built in one of the Pavilion Houses opposite the manor (now returned to community arts use). The Pavilion Studio housed a customised vintage analogue Shep/Neve inline desk. Accommodation for artists using this studio was in one of the Alms Houses next to the church in the manor park.

Under Harry Maloney's directive in the mid-1980s through to the early 1990s, Paul Ward acted as Technical Manager, Bindi Belle (previously known as Mandie Emmings) Bookings Manager, Steve Groom house maintenance and gardens, Gary Wilkinson, Nick Blundell & Gordon Bonnar (formerly of the band 'Heavy Pettin') as inhouse recording engineers.

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