Musician and actor. Born David Robert Jones 40 Stansfield Road, Brixton. The family left here when David was 6 and moved to Plaistow Grove, Bromley.
David changed his surname to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees. Bowie's early work included the 1967 single The Laughing Gnome (which he'd probably rather forget). He had a major hit in 1969 with Space Oddity, when he was living in Foxgrove Road Beckenham, and went on to greater success with the albums Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Diamond Dogs. As an actor his films include: The Elephant Man on Broadway and on film in The Man Who Fell to Earth and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.
Bowie lived in Beckenham for 5 years and in 1969 ran the Beckenham Arts Lab from the Three Tuns pub. For the last word on Bowie in London see Londonist.
The Daily Mail reported that Bowie lived in New York from 1993 but after being diagnosed with cancer he returned to London in summer 2014 with his wife and then 13 year-old daughter to visit his former homes at his birth-place in Brixton and in Bromley and Beckenham.
He had more style and charisma than your average earthman and we are very sad that he had to go.
2023: Previously we thought Bowie was married to Angela in 1970 at Bromley Old Town Hall but Nigel Hogan wrote querying that, so we investigated. Bowie married Angie at Bromley Registry Office. This Facebook page about the wedding puts Bromley Registry Office “at the top of Beckenham Lane” and says that “the reception was over the road at the Swan and Mitre pub”. Bromley Civic Society, referring to what is now Community House, South Street, writes that “In the 1990s this building was replaced by a new (current) Magistrates Court on the junction of Beckenham Lane (demolishing the former Registry Office in the process).” The pub is still at that junction and its proximity offers strong confirmation to the Registry Office being the venue for the marriage.
All this puts the 1970 wedding in the Bromley Registry Office, at the Beckenham Lane/London Road junction, a building which was demolished in the 1990s. Photos (e.g. Alamy) of the happy couple after the wedding show a small section of the building and it looks Victorian. However we cannot find another photo of the building. This 1894 map and this 1931 map probably both show the building but we don’t even know whether it was on Beckenham Road or on London Road. Can anyone help?
Later Bowie married Iman, his second wife, twice: in Switzerland and in Italy, and we have absolutely no interest in what those buildings looked like.
