The only gay couple in a Northamptonshire village who shocked, then lit up, polite society
I knew the house long before they turned up. The handsome old rectory in the Northamptonshire village of Aston-Le-Walls was home to a fellow teenager and she would invite me round to dinner parties. We would glug cheap wine and then use an empty bottle for that game where you spin it twice, and the two individuals that its top points to must snog, to the uproarious glee of the others.
A little scandalous, maybe. But not half as outrageous as the couple who then bought the house. It's almost 30 years to the day, and I can recall the ripples, the minor quake, that shook the polite society of Northamptonshire back in the 1990s.
Johnnie Lloyd Morgan and Philip Astley-Jones were a gay couple. Not just the only gays in the village, but seemingly the only 'out and proud' same-sex male couple in the county.
The baroneted Bufton-Tuftons shifted awkwardly behind their estate desks while their lady wives waited to see which of their friends would be the first to crack, first out of the blocks with a dinner invitation.
And as Johnnie now recalls, they came to Northamptonshire with a triple whammy of faux pas: 'We were gay, we were Londoners and we were weekenders.'
Then, guess what? News got around that jeweller Johnnie and antique dealer Philip were not just fabulous company but their presence could right the configurations at dinner parties, otherwise flawed by that societal pestilence of widowhood. Recently bereaved women saw their way to cathartic merriment safe in the knowledge that the presence of Philip and Johnnie would enable that vital boy/girl/boy/girl dining table mapping.
They were an instant hit. And then came what we all desired: an invitation to a dinner party at their house, seated around a convivially large round table. And what a house it became. Philip's collecting saw the place – every corner, side table, and wall – adorned with his purchases. From Kenyan hippo skulls to 17th-century portraits, his growing hoard was as esoteric as it was occasionally mad.
As Johnnie says: 'He had wonderful taste but also an impulse that saw him buying things like a clown's shoe or a plaster model of a foot.'
All of which is now in particular focus because Philip died in 2021 and on April 9, much of his collection will go under the hammer at auctioneers Dreweatts. It's both profoundly sad and cathartic for Johnnie, who adds: 'We discussed a sale before he died, and he said he would be happy that his things would find new homes. I see it as breaking up a theatre set but knowing there will be another play that will use it next month.'
And, he says, 'I'm quite looking forward to being able to find space on a table to put down a glass.'
While a preview of the sale – and there are some 300 lots – will remind us friends of Philip's impeccable eye, it also jogs my memory of how, having grown to love this wonderful couple, we were scandalised a notch further.
In 2014, the couple invited another to join them at Aston-Le-Walls. 'There's a new addition and he's drop-dead fabulous,' Philip once told me, adding: 'We're going to need a bigger bed.'
Thus Northants got its first gay throuple, and we loved them even more for it. Which just goes to show that the world is a better place when its conventions, its social mores and its attitudes are thrown in the air and the fuddy-duddies get to see how much gayer life is when you throw a few gays into the mix.
The actor Sir Ian McKellen told The Times this week that young gay actors in Hollywood should come out. 'I have never met anybody who came out who regretted it,' he said. 'Being in the closet is silly – there's no need for it. Don't listen to your advisers, listen to your heart. Listen to your gay friends who know better. Come out. Get into the sunshine.'
And, as Philip and friends demonstrated, people are actually far more relaxed about such things than one might think. Although, personally, I draw the line at clown's shoes.
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