Interested in buying a piece of Libertines lore? The legendary Bethnal Green property home to frontmen Pete Doherty and Carl Barât in the early noughties is for sale with Dexters for £850,000.
Doherty and Barât formed the Libertines alongside bassist John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell in 1997, and signed their first record deal with Rough Trade in 2001.
The maisonette in Teesdale Street, was let to Doherty and Barât by Rough Trade as part of the deal, and they moved in the same year.
The run-down flat, however, quickly became the base for non-stop parties and the band’s famous “guerilla gigs”, where they would post details on their website and invite fans to watch them play in their living room.
The duo nicknamed the property “the Albion Rooms”, in homage to the concept of Albion —a literary term for Great Britain— which is one of the band’s central themes, representing a mythic England of art and hedonism.
“All the people whose floors I’d kipped on, everyone who I’d scrounged a spliff off, were invited to live at the Albion Rooms, in a giant Arcadian reverie,” Doherty is quoted as saying in Nathan Yates’ biography. “I let them write on the walls, put on records, flick through books, make cups of tea.”
Although the gigs were a hit with fans, who revelled in the opportunity to see the band play in their own home, they were less popular with the neighbours, who called the police many times. “I remember turning up to one where the neighbour upstairs tried to break the door down with an axe,” recalled Powell in a 2022 radio interview.
With all its activity, the house, predictably, was in a terrible state. According to Yates’ book, the property had thick, velvet curtains which blocked out the light, and a giant fish-eye mirror in the lounge. Doherty’s room was accessed via a cast iron spiral staircase —no longer in situ— and contained a bed made of four mattresses piled on top of each other.
The cupboards were empty, the sinks were blocked, and the toilet didn’t flush. “At least we've got hot and cold running water here. We haven't got that at home,” said Doherty in a 2003 interview with The Telegraph. “I have to flush my toilet with Evian. Only the best for the Albion rooms."
With their relationship deteriorating, Barât moved out of the flat in early 2003. To commemorate the occasion, the band held a final guerrilla gig at the Albion Rooms, in which they serenaded the vanload of police officers who arrived with a rendition of the Guns of Brixton, by The Clash.
Today, however, the flat is almost unrecognisable from its Albion Rooms days. Covering 834 square feet over two floors, the open plan kitchen and living room —home of the guerrilla gigs— have been given a makeover, with wood flooring, “heritage-blue” walls and an open fireplace. In a nod to the room’s former party days, there is a bar area in the corner of the reception room and velvet drapes hanging from the sash windows.
There are two bedrooms: one accessible from the living space and the other upstairs, along with the chic, newly renovated bathroom.
The flat also has an east-facing roof terrace, designed in the style of a “Mediterranean bistro”, which is advertised as having space to grow flowers and herbs.
The property was purchased by its current owner for £600,000 in 2014, according to Land Registry records.
“The immaculate presentation of this two-bedroom, split level maisonette on Teesdale Street belies its extraordinary rock history, as the former crash pad of two of Britain’s most iconic singers, Pete Doherty and Carl Barât of The Libertines,” says Magnus Skullerud at Dexters.
“Just off the Hackney Road, with its own private entrance, a newly renovated bathroom and a wonderful roof terrace, it’s perfectly placed to enjoy the best of vibrant east London life.”
Last year, one of the band members put his Stoke Newington home —on Albion Road, no less— on the market for £1.95 million to relocate to Margate. The band opened a hotel and recording studio, The Albion Rooms, in the seaside town in 2020.
“The concept [of] ‘Albion’ has long since been a part of The Libertines’ mythology,” said the owner of the house, who did not wish to be named. “The band lived in a squat a little further down on Albion Road in the late 90s and it became a long-term ambition of mine to live there again, only a little more legitimately.”
