11 hours Ago
A pub in Sussex played a starring role in the music video for a huge Christmas hit. The Fountain in Ashurst, near Steyning, was where the music video for Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime was filmed in 1979. The 16th century pub exterior is centre stage at the opening of the video before the camera moves into the candlelit bar.
McCartney, along with Wings band members, can be seen partaking in some festive fun and mingling with pub-goers inside the watering hole. The now 82-year-old, who shot to fame with The Beatles, takes to the tinsel topped piano as he belts out the festive tune surrounded by drinkers. McCartney inside the pub (Image: MFL Communications Ltd) A guitar playing McCartney then leads drinkers out to a bonfire in the grounds of the pub where the merrymaking continues.
And at one point a giant present flies over the pub. Read more: Singer in hit band leaps into audience to save woman McCartney’s first wife Linda, who was the keyboardist and a vocalist in Wings, as well as a respected photographer and activist, also featured in the video. When she died of breast cancer in 1998 half her ashes were brought back to the UK from Arizona and were scattered at Blossom Wood Farm in Peasmarsh , near Rye, where the couple had lived since 1973.
McCartney still owns the farm. The Fountain, which was a farmhouse until 1788, is no stranger to high profile visitors. The celebrity haunt has had visits from Adele when she lived in Partridge Green, actor Tony Robinson, best known for character Baldrick in Blackadder, and was frequented by actor and director Sir Laurence Olivier who lived near Ashurst.
In 1980 the pub was given Grade II listing. This week, McCartney kicked off the UK leg of his Got Back tour. In his first performance in his home country since Glastonbury 2022, the former Beatle took fans at Manchester’s Co-op Live arena on a journey back through a remarkable career.
With songs from as far back as The Quarrymen, through Beatlemania and to Wings and his solo material, Sir Paul included tributes to his late bandmates and even a festive surprise..
