Want to acquire a piece of David Bowie history? His childhood home in Bromley is for sale with Leaders for £449,500.
David Bowie — born David Robert Jones — moved into the modest two-bedroom house on Canon Road in 1953, when he was six years old.
His parents, Peggy and John, had relocated from their house on Stansfield Road in Brixton, where Bowie was born. Peggy was a cinema usherette, while John worked for the charity Barnardo’s.
The Joneses’ time at the Canon Road house, however, was brief, although they remained in Bromley long-term. The family moved out the following year, to a slightly larger house on nearby Clarence Road. In 1955, they moved again, to Plaistow Grove, where they stayed for a decade.
During his time in Bromley, Bowie had a typical suburban life: he attended two local primary schools, and later Bromley Technical College, where his first-ever live performance with a band took place at the school fete in 1962.
“There was a picture of him in school, and the teachers would say, ‘If you don’t behave yourself, Kureishi, you’ll end up like him.’ He liberated all suburban teenagers,” said the writer Hanif Kureishi in Dylan Jones’ biography of Bowie. Kureishi was Bowie’s friend and later collaborator, and was seven years behind him at school.
“The idea that someone like us from round the corner could become a rock star was very inspirational. It was quite creative down there in Bromley despite the utter boredom and awfulness of the suburbs.”
Bowie was also a fan of Medhursts, the local department store — now a Primark — with a “fantastic record department”. “There wasn’t an American release they didn’t have or couldn’t get. Quite as hip as any London supplier,” said Bowie in a 2003 interview with Vanity Fair. “I would have had a very dry musical run were it not for this place.”
By 1966, Jones had become David Bowie. Space Oddity hit the charts in 1969, but it was his performance of Starman on Top of the Pops in 1972 which shot Bowie to international stardom.
Keen to escape the suburbs, Bowie moved away from Bromley around 1965. He spent the next four years experimenting with life in London, before moving back out to Beckenham for the next five years.
Today, his innocuous former home on Canon Road measures 813 square feet, with a kitchen, dining room and reception downstairs and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the floor above.
The front of the building —once a more Bowie-like pink— has been painted beige, with a black front door. Outside, there’s a 428 square foot rear paved garden.
With its neutral interiors and “good condition presentation” which, the agents say, “allows you to put your own touch on the space”, there is little to give away that this was once the home of one of the UK’s musical greats.
The property was last sold for £124,999 in December 2014, according to Land Registry records.
It is marketed as a “charming two-bedroom period terraced house in a quiet residential position,” and “the perfect place to call home”.
