A six-bedroom house in Highgate —with a neutral colour scheme, underfloor heating and a state-of-the-art kitchen— may seem like an unlikely birthplace for rock and roll legends, Pink Floyd.
But the band formed here in the sixties, and the property on Stanhope Gardens is now available to rent for £11,999 per month – a price that the original band members, who had a food budget of a shilling a day, may have baulked at.
Bassist Roger Waters, drummer Nick Mason and keyboard player Richard Wright all moved into the house in 1963 as students, while early lead singer and guitarist Syd Barrett arrived around a year later when Wright moved out.
At the time, the house was owned by live-in landlord Mike Leonard, who was an architect and college lecturer. Leonard played an important role in the formation of the band —even filling in as keyboard player for a brief period— and was happy for them to use the space for rehearsals.
Leonard also created lighting systems that complemented the band’s music, and appeared, demonstrating his light and sound experiments, in the BBC Tomorrow’s World broadcast from the house in 1968. Appropriately, the band was named “Leonard’s Lodgers” for a part of its infancy.
“You could hear them when you turned off the main road a quarter of a mile away,” Leonard is quoted as saying in Crazy Diamond: Syd Barrett and the dawn of Pink Floyd. “The noise was phenomenal and although the neighbours sent round the police and council officials, the band didn’t seem too worried.”
So loud was the noise, according to the book, that Leonard’s office, situated above the basement, throbbed. The band were even sent a lawyer's letter which alleged that the noise was damaging a resident down the road's health, and threatened to sue them for invasion of privacy.
Still, the house on Stanhope Gardens was where the band’s original sound began to emerge. After a series of alternative names —including the Megadeaths, Spectrum Five, The Tea Set and Pink Floyd Sound— the band began calling themselves Pink Floyd in 1965.
They signed their first record deal with EMI in 1967, with their first single, Arnold Layne, released that year. The house is thought to have played a crucial role in the group's development, who went on to become one of the most successful rock bands in history with albums like Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall.
“Stanhope Gardens made a real difference to our musical activities,” wrote Mason in his book, Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd. “We had our own permanent rehearsal facility, thanks to an indulgent landlord.”
Leonard owned the property until his death in 2012, when it was sold at auction for £1.2 million to a developer. They modernised the house and put it back on sale for £3 million in 2015. The following year, it was listed for rent for £8,645pcm.
Today, at £11,999pcm through Interlet, the Edwardian house offers 3,000 sq ft of space over four storeys. Downstairs, there’s a double reception area and designer Poggenpohl kitchen with bi-folding doors leading out into the garden.
The 50 ft garden, where Mason once buried the hood frame of his Aston Martin, was landscaped after it was sold in 2012. It’s hard to imagine that any long-buried car parts would have survived the overhaul.
Upstairs, there are six double bedrooms and four bathrooms, with a private terrace on the first floor.
“[Leonard’s] Burmese cats entertained us in the duller moments, climbing the hessian covered walls in search of that elusive sardine nailed to the ceiling,” wrote Mason in a Facebook post in 2012. Today, there is not a sardine in sight. The noise, instruments and animals have been replaced with underfloor heating, custom-designed lighting and spacious kitchen cabinetry (although this is still a pet friendly rental).
And while Waters, Mason, Wright and Barrett lived at the house while studying, it seems unlikely that any students will be renting here for £11,999pcm – or that any landlord would be as lax on noise as Leonard. Is rock and roll dead?
