📍Welling, London Borough of Bexley, UK
1958 – 1978“Kate Bush was born in July 1958 and grew up at East Wickham Farm, an old farmhouse, more than three centuries old, near Welling in the London Borough of Bexley, on the very edge of suburbia with fields out the back. It was no longer a working farm, but it had barns and stables, a rose garden and an old duck pond that the family turned into a swimming pool. Her father, Robert, was a GP who played Chopin, Schubert and Beethoven on the piano, and her mother, Hannah, was an Irish nurse who loved to dance. She grew up with two older brothers, John, a poet and photographer, and Paddy, a musician who collected unusual instruments from around the world, and the house was full of folk music, poetry, art and dance. She learned piano and violin, and by eleven she was writing her own songs at the family's piano and organ in the barn. She went to St Joseph's Convent Grammar School in Abbey Wood, where she wrote poems for the school magazine, and she studied dance and mime. Her family recorded dozens of her songs on tape at home. Through a family friend, the tapes reached David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, who helped her record a demo, and at sixteen she signed with EMI. In 1978, at nineteen, Wuthering Heights, which she had written at the farmhouse, went to number one, making her the first woman to top the UK charts with a self-written song. The barn at East Wickham later became her recording studio, and the farmhouse has stayed in the family.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today