Hansons auctioneers show off letters written by Terry Wainwright’s aunt Sylvia to his mother Lynn

Blackpool man finds his aunt’s letters to his mother which she kept for more than 60 years

A collection of letters belonging to a woman who dated one of the Rolling Stones when she was young and living in Chiswick has been discovered, giving a little peek into what their lives were like in the ‘Swinging Sixties’, when they were famous, but before they became megastars, and what it was like for those caught up in their slipstream.

Terry Wainwright from Thornton-Cleveleys near Blackpool was sorting through his late mother Lynn’s personal effects after her death when he came across the remarkable find at the back of a drawer.

“Many years ago, my mum told me how in the early sixties she and her sister had briefly been dating Mick Jagger and Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones”, he said. “But I never fully believed her.

“While working through her stuff, I’ve found personal letters with messages from the band and signatures. I did my research too and all of it adds up.”

Terry’s aunt Sylvia was living in a rented flat in Chiswick and working in a clothes shop, having applied to study dress design at the Royal Academy of Art, when she started hanging out with the band in 1964.

When his mum died earlier this year, aged 78, Terry found the letters which Sylvia had written to her at the time.

“They were hidden at the back of a display cabinet, so were obviously long treasured by my mum”.

One of Sylvia’s letters to her sister; Brian Jones and Mick Jagger at the Marquee Club, photograph Young

That party at Mick’s was an absolute WOW!

The cache included personal letters and one note signed by Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards.

In one letter Sylvia wrote she hadn’t got to bed until 5.00 am:

“That party at Mick’s was an absolute WOW! Everybody was there and I mean everybody. It would take me all night to write down all the names, so I won’t start…

“Oh Lynn, I wish you could have been there. You would have been in a dead feint when you saw all the pop stars there”.

She goes on that she and Keith Relf from the Yarbirds invented a little dance together:

“What a laugh we had. We do it to the song called ‘Do the Crocodile’, but as yet, it is a nameless dance and strictly between use two”.

Since 1962 The Stones had been playing regularly at the Ealing Blues Club – where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards first met Brian Jones – and the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond.

READ ALSO: Celebrating the Rock heritage of SW London

They made their debut as the ‘Rollin’ Stones’ at the Marquee Club in July 1962. They were back in Chiswick last year recording their 25th record album at the Metropolis Studios.

READ ALSO: Rolling Stones record their 25th album in Chiswick

Letter signed by Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

“You’ll never guess who I’ve got in the flat with me at the moment”

Sylvia also writes of plans for the Stones’ American tour:

“You’ll never guess who I’ve got in the flat with me at the moment? Three of that disreputable group called the Stones. They are busy making plans for their tour in America in April.”

Elsewhere, she mentions “Jeff from the Yardbirds”, references model Jean Shrimpton’s sister Christine, and describes social gatherings in Chiswick packed with musicians and “loads of boys”.

The letters give the impression of a romance with Brian Jones, the band’s founder member who, a few years after the letters were written, would be found dead from an overdose at the age of just 27.

One of the letters is signed:

“Hi love! Brian here. How are you? Pity I wasn’t here to see you when you come next week. Never mind – maybe someday. Lots of love, Brian.”

In the note which carries the signatures of Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Sylvia comments:

“Brian is reading over my shoulder now. The little devil has just given me a dig for writing that. Excuse the slips [a long pen mark] but I jumped”.

The Crawdaddy Club in Richmond; photograph Jeremy Fletcher/ Redferns

“The landlord will be away all weekend, so we are having a party”

Brian Jones had a famously turbulent romantic life with high-profile girlfriends including models, actresses and musicians, including the German-Italian model Anita Pallenberg, who left Jones for his bandmate Keith Richards; and the German singer Nico, whom he introduced to Andy Warhol, which led to her role in The Velvet Underground.

By the time he knew Sylvia in Chiswick he already had four children by different women. In the summer of 1964 Linda Lawrence gave birth to his fifth child. Linda later married the singer Donovan, who adopted the child.

Despite the charmingly ‘boy next door’ impression Sylvia gives of him in her letters – the thoughtful boyfriend who dropped off 1,000-piece jigsaws at the flat – he did nothing to support or build relationships with his children and by October another occasional girlfriend Dawn Molloy was pregnant with his sixth.

He died in 1969, found drowned in a swimming pool, his liver and heart affected by past drug and alcohol abuse.

Aside from the references to the Stones and their rock & roll mates, Sylvia’s letters are a snapshot of an ordinary young person experiencing swinging London – hangovers and aspirin, hopes of attending the Royal College of Art to study dress design, rented rooms in Chiswick where: “the landlord will be away all weekend, so we are having a party”.

The letters are now with auctioneers Hansons in Derbyshire.