LONDON, Mar 19, 2002/ --- Yoko Ono has purchased John Lennon's childhood home in Liverpool. The National Trust, which purchased Paul McCartney's boyhood digs, reportedly declined to buy the property, so Ono herself shelled out about $212,000 for the semi-detached house and handed it over to the British heritage organization.

"I am thrilled that we have managed to buy John's main childhood home," Ono said Thursday. "It is especially pleasing that we will be able to keep such an important part of John's and The Beatles' history intact and out of the hands of unsympathetic private developers."

Lennon learned how to play the guitar and penned early Beatles hit "Please Please Me" in the Liverpool house. He lived there with his Aunt Mimi, and the Beatles rehearsed in the house in the early days.

Today, Ono also unveiled a seven-foot bronze statue of her late husband to commemorate the renaming of Liverpool airport in his honor. Liverpool John Lennon Airport's new logo is a sketch of the slain star's face accompanied by with the words "Above Us Only Skies," a line from his song "Imagine."