David Bowie’s childhood home in London is set to open to the public next year after being bought by a charity, the Heritage of London Trust said Thursday.
The Heritage of London Trust said the 19th-century railway worker’s cottage in Bromley, a south London suburb, will be restored to its 1960s decor and opened for visits. The plan includes letting visitors see the recreated bedroom, described by the charity as “where a spark became a flame.”
The charity said visitors will be able to tour a bedroom measuring 9 feet by 10 feet (2.7 meters by 3 meters). The house is the property where Bowie—born David Jones—lived with his parents from 1955, when he was 8, until 1967, when he was a 20-year-old working musician seeking fame.
Geoffrey Marsh, co-curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s 2013 exhibition “David Bowie Is,” said the house is where Bowie “evolved from an ordinary suburban schoolboy to the beginnings of an extraordinary international stardom.” Marsh also recounted Bowie’s reflection on the room, quoting him: “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.”
The Heritage of London Trust bought the house after it went on the market last year, but it has not said how much it paid. The AP story noted that other houses on the street have recently sold for upwards of 500,000 pounds ($670,000), which is modest by London standards.
The trust said the house project is backed by Bowie’s estate. It reported that the project has received a 500,000-pound charity grant and is seeking to raise another 1.2 million pounds in donations, with an aim to open the house in late 2027 for public visits and creative workshops for children.
Nicola Stacey, a director of the Heritage of London Trust, said the house will offer visitors insight into Bowie’s creative origins and into domestic life in the 1950s and 1960s, a period the AP described as one of huge social change. Stacey said she wants it to feel lived in, saying: “I’m keen that it doesn’t feel static, it doesn’t, feel sterile, there’s a sense of the family living there.”
“And a sense of that you’ve really walked into David Bowie’s life in the 1960s,” Stacey added.
The announcement came as fans mark a decade since Bowie’s death at age 69 on Jan. 10, 2016, two days after the release of his final album, “Blackstar.” Stacey also pointed to Bowie’s broader cultural legacy, saying the singer’s “idea of reinvention” remains inspiring today and that modern audiences celebrate personas in a way that “wasn’t celebrated back in the 1960s,” adding, “And he helped pave the change.”
George Underwood, a childhood friend, said in a statement that the house was where “we spent so much time together, listening to and playing music.” He said he had heard people describe how Bowie’s music “saved them or changed their life,” calling it “amazing” that it all “started here, from such small beginnings, in this house,” before concluding: “We were dreamers, and look what he became.”