The London house where Bowie, then David Jones, lived from 1955 to 1968 will be opened at the end of 2027
On the evening of 6 July 1972, thousands of kids across the UK had their lives changed when the sight of David Bowie performing Starman on Top of the Pops was beamed into their living rooms. Come the end of 2027, Bowie fans will be able to walk the very floorboards where the young David Jones grew up, when his childhood home in Bromley, south London, is opened to the public for the first time.
Ahead of the 10th anniversary of Bowie’s death this weekend (he would have turned 79 on Thursday), the Heritage of London Trust has announced that it has acquired the two-up, two-down house at 4 Plaistow Grove where Bowie lived from 1955 to 1968.
Bowie’s tiny teenage bedroom – approximately nine by 10 feet – will offer an immersive experience for visitors. In 1990, he recalled: “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 onto the street, I had to pass through this no-man’s-land of the living room.”
Just standing in the room today, said Geoffrey Marsh, who co-curated the V&A’s David Bowie Is exhibition in 2013 and will curate the restoration, feels extraordinary. “You think, someone who didn’t have any big advantages, who came from an ordinary family, went to an ordinary school – what was it that went on there which created this driving ambition to succeed, to want to be a star, and which took him right through to it?”
