Ian, Oonagh and Rosswood Ltd ....

On March 29, 1965, Inspector D. J. Walsh called on 6 Chesterfield Gardens to discover whether there was a company called Radio Caroline trading at that address. He could not find a standard name plate on the building, but he did notice that on the pillar to the left of the front door the name 'Caroline' had been painted, and on the pillar to the right he observed the word 'House'.

Inside the property he could not find a company name plate for a 'Caroline House Limited' that was trading as 'Caroline Sales', but he did find a piece of paper taped to an inside wall with the umbrella name of 'Caroline Sales Office', and although it did not claim to be a limited registered company, the piece of paper stated that it was trading as several different registered companies.

None of those companies was shown to be Rosswood Ltd. Now Oonagh Leigh (she had not as yet changed her surname), claimed in OEM 205 that Rosswood Ltd was a 'holding company' which leased 6 Chesterfield Gardens and then sub-let other offices in that building. Therefore Rosswood Ltd would be required by law to show its presence, but there was no presence of any sort for this company to be discovered by Inspector Walsh. Because the umbrella leasing company should have been called 'Caroline House Limited', that is the name of a holding company sub-letting the building, due to the fact that the business of the lessee holding the parent lease from the landlord, was in the business of sub-letting. It was not in the radio or entertainment business.

OEM 205 - Did you purchase Caroline House or lease it?:

Oonagh Leigh: We leased it. Rosswood had the lease. Then Planet Productions rented it from Rosswood. I rented out the top floor to bring in extra income.

OEM 205 - Was Rosswood a sort of holding company?:

Oonagh Leigh: I was a director of Rosswood, it was a holding company. We took out the lease in Chesterfied Gardens. That was held by Rosswood. I ran Rosswood because they did not need the whole building. I rented out a couple of floors to people like the Moody Blues management, the odd film company. They wanted kind of furnished premises with a prestigious address. So we had another switchboard upstairs. I controlled it, and gave the phone number. If they did not pay the rent, they did not have a phone service.

The biggest problems with the trio of make-believers is that they either don't know what they are talking about, or they do know what they are talking about but chose to lie instead of telling the truth, and they overlay all of it by speaking or writing in "you know" sort of general terms when it comes to dates and places. They do not want to be pinned down to specifics. We do.

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​The words "holding company" as used by Oonagh Leigh are a classic example. This is how one dictionary defines a 'holding company" = "A company created to buy and own the shares of other companies, which it then controls." By that definition Rosswood Ltd had to be the controlling company of other companies, but it was not! 

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​Oonagh Leigh (she had not as yet changed her surname), claimed in OEM 205 that Rosswood Ltd was a 'holding company' which leased 6 Chesterfield Gardens and then that company sub-let part of that same building. Therefore by her own definition, Rosswood Ltd would be a company that sub-let the same property to other companies that Rosswood Ltd owned.

It would also be required by law to show its presence, but there was no presence of any sort for this company to be discovered by Inspector Walsh.

This umbrella leasing company that Oonagh Leigh describes as a 'holding company' could have been called 'Caroline House Limited', because that would have been the proper name according to the two words painted on the pillars outside the building. Or, it could have been listed as Rosswood Limited "trading as Caroline House Limited" - which is what the scrap of paper taped to an inner wall claimed about other businesses at that same location. However, that scap of paper referred to "Caroline Sales" which did not exist as an entity claimed by any company.

Legally every one of those companies should have been separately identified and each one independently claiming to represent 'Caroline Sales', but the way it was typed gave the impression that 'Caroline Sales' that was not even registered as an incorporated company, was really the parent company of all of those other companies. However, without it being incorporated as a company, 'Caroline Sales' could not be the "holding company" of the shares in all of those other companies.

Whoever typed that piece of paper had no idea of what they were doing! 

We will continue to investigate whether anything that Oonagh Leigh claimed to be true - was true at that time, or at any other time. One thing appears to be very clear and that is the Rosswood Limited was not a holding company, if anything at all, it was a sub-leasing property agency. But was it legally registered for that purpose, and did the lease on the property which appears to have been issued by the business that Harry Meadows controlled from number 8 Chesterfield Gardens, allow for sub-letting of his property at 6 Chesterfield Gardens?

​Another problem shows up in relation to the credit worthiness of Rosswood Limited. It was a flim-flam operation as GPO investigations revealed when they installed its phone service.

But that telephone number and phone service was not initially installed at 6 Chesterfield Gardens. Apart from Oonagh Leigh making a reference in OEM 205 to Rosswood Limited at 6 Chesterfield Gardens in Mayfair, on paper that phone service for Rosswood Ltd was tied to Ian Cowper Ross, and not to Oonagh Leigh.

Both Onnagh Leigh and Ronan O'Rahilly were at a totally different address over a mile away in Belgravia!

This anomaly over sub-letting by Oonagh Leigh's reference to a supposed property company also raises major questions about the veracity of any claim made by Oonagh Leigh concerning a company called Rosswood Ltd.

​Oonagh Leigh has fed OEM 205 so many false claims in her testimony that it is near to being worthless at best, and intentionally deceptive for fraudulent reasons at worst.

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'Rosswood' is a name derived from Ian Cowper Ross' parents' home at Reynards Wood in Hindhead. It was formed by combining the surname of Ross with the word Wood.

Sandwiched in between the address at 5 Eaton Place in London SW1 and 6 Chesterfield Gardens, there is another business name tied to that Belgravia address with a more complete documented record that links Oonagh Leigh together with Ronan O'Rahilly at the same address. What is peculiar, is that neither Oonagh Leigh nor Ian Cowper Ross make any mention of this other business!

But when we started to assemble the information we already had researched regarding 5 Eaton Place, and then placed it together with information we now have about 5 Eaton Place, a lot more questions began to pop up in relation to the beginnings of the Radio Caroline project. Suddenly a lot of  missing pieces in a giant jigsaw puzzle began to appear, and the weekend before last we became able to fill-in a lot more blank spaces, thanks to a phone call from a retired banker.

​Right now we ask you to pay close attention to what this GPO memo tells us:

• ​The phone line was installed at 5 Eaton Place on January 27, 1964.
• The phone number was Belgravia 8440.
• A deposit of £50 was paid to the GPO to install the line for Rosswood Ltd. at 5 Eaton Place.
• The GPO wondered about the credit worthiness of Rosswood Ltd.
• Planet Productions Limited was registered in Ireland (never in UK) on February 27, 1964.
• The initial amount of £30 was spent on March 11, 1964 on a call to the mv Caroline (Fredericia).
• Most of the £30 was made up of charges for the first 4 to 5 weeks of service.
• The mv Caroline did not arrive off Harwich until March 27, 1964.
• Calls were made from mv Caroline to Belgravia 8440 before the ship-to-shore link was cut.
• As of March 31, 1964 the GPO phone bill had not been paid by Rosswood Ltd.

So the unanswered questions are these:

• Why was a company called Rosswood Ltd registered using the home address of the parents of Ian Cowper Ross?
• Who was using 5 Eaton Place between January 27, 1964 and March 31, 1964?
• What was the link between Rosswood Ltd and the mv Caroline (Fredericia)?

More questions and more answers tomorrow!