The Town House was originally managed by Barbara Jeffries as part of the
Virgin Studios Group. The Goldhawk Road facility had three recording rooms, numbered One, Two, and Four, with the Townhouse Three designation given to
Ramport Studios after the Virgin Group acquired it from
The Who in 1984. The exterior of the building was covered with ''
trompe-l'œil'' murals by
Ken WHote. Town House Studio One originally was home to a 72-input
Helios console with an Alison 64K computer mixdown system, which now resides at Shorefire Recording Studios,
Long Branch, New Jersey, United States. The Town House established a close relationship with
Solid State Logic when it became the first studio in the UK to install an
SL 4000 B Series console in Studio Two in 1978. Artists that recorded at the Town House included
Elton John,
Queen,
Phil Collins,
Philip Bailey,
Asia,
Bryan Ferry,
Coldplay,
Muse,
General Public,
Duran Duran,
Jamiroquai,
Kylie Minogue,
Oasis,
XTC,
Robbie Williams,
Peter Gabriel, In 1992, Branson sold Virgin Records, including the Virgin Studios Group and The Town House, to
EMI. In 2002, the
Sanctuary Group bought the studio from EMI. Al Stone, a recording engineer and producer who trained at The Town House, ran the studios for Sanctuary beginning in 2006, only to see Universal close it around April 2008 after a Sanctuary buy-out. Today, a luxury apartment complex is located at the address. ==References==