David Bowie's former childhood home where he wrote one of his best known songs, Space Oddity, is to open to the public as an "immersive experience".
The house at 4 Plaistow Grove in Bromley, south-east London, where Bowie lived from the age of eight to 20, has been acquired by Heritage Of London Trust, which also plans to host creative and skills workshops at the venue.
The home will be returned to its early 1960s appearance and a never-before-seen archive will help to recreate the interior layout as it was when Bowie lived there, with help from Geoffrey Marsh, co-curator of the Victoria And Albert Museum’s David Bowie Is exhibition.
Marsh said: "It was in this small house, particularly in his tiny bedroom, that Bowie evolved from an ordinary suburban schoolboy to the beginnings of an extraordinary international stardom.
"As he said, 'I spent so much time in my bedroom, it really was my entire world, I had books up there, my music up there, my record player, going from my world upstairs out on to the street, I had to pass through this no-man’s-land of the living room’."
The work will be backed by a £500,000 grant from the Jones Day Foundation, a non-profit group funded by lawyers and staff with the Jones Day law firm, along with a public fundraising campaign launching this month.
The announcement of the acquisition comes on what would have been David Bowie’s birthday on 8 January, two days before the 10-year anniversary of his death on 10 January.
It also comes on the 10th anniversary of the release of Bowie’s final album Blackstar, which has been lauded as one of the singer’s best works, incorporating jazz and hip-hop influences in songs which reference his impending death from liver cancer aged 69.
The house is near the Edwardian "Bowie bandstand", where the late musician performed in 1969, which was restored by Bromley Council and Heritage Of London Trust in 2024.
Widely considered as one of the greatest artists of all time, and is best known for songs such as Starman, Ashes To Ashes and Sound And Vision.
Bowie was known for his drastic changes in sound and appearance during his career, beginning as a pop singer in the 1960s, before rising to major fame in the 1970s with glam rock albums The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972) and Aladdin Sane (1973).
He embraced soul on the albums Young Americans (1975) and Station To Station (1976), and was among the first white artists to appear on US TV show Soul Train, before plunging into krautrock influences on Low (1977), Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979).
Source: Press Association
