ABSTRACT
When I was rebuilding The Manor studio in Oxfordshire, England, in 1975, an accidental collapse of part of the wall, above an old, small window, allowed sunlight to stream into the building. Eventually I decided to keep the windows open, but not before some deep consideration of the likely acceptance of daylight in the studio. It may seem strange now, but at the time, almost all studios were without windows. In 1971, The Manor had become one of only a very few serious recording studios in country locations. Perhaps the sound isolation requirements of the in-town studios had led, as a matter of course, to windows being bricked-up or otherwise sealed. In the original 1971 version of The Manor studio, Tom Newman had put a window in one side of the elevated control room. This took a few people by surprise, but it was soon generally considered to be a good thing to be able to gaze across the countryside from time to time. Remember this was a time when musicians were just beginning to have a little more say in how studios should be designed, and Newman was first and foremost a musician, rather than a studio designer.
