80s pop icons’ former studio hits the market for £6,000,000

Nestled between Old Street and Clerkenwell, you’ll find an unassuming former warehouse tucked behind a walled courtyard.

And yet, as with many places in London, there’s a hidden history here that doesn’t immediately reveal itself.

After they found fame in the 1980s, popstars The Pet Shop Boys set up their recording studio here in White Lion Court on Garrett Street – and now it’s for sale to the tune of £6,000,000.

At 4,400 square feet, after Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe decided to sell up it was converted into a home by architect Charles Tashima, and now boasts four bedrooms and four bathrooms.

Much of the redesign intentionally focused on the property’s original Victorian features, including the efforts to expose the original brickwork, roof trusses and high timber beams.

And, despite the fact that it’s no longer used as a studio, it’s still soundproof – so if you want to indulge in a late-night film marathon or simply want to blast The Pet Shop Boys’ best hits as the building intended, you won’t be disturbing the neighbours.

The open-plan reception room is no doubt the centrepiece of the listing, featuring a whopping 17 metres of timber beams that look out onto a south-facing roof terrace.

There’s something here not just for the music fans, but for the aviation lovers too. Throughout the building, there’s fossil limestone flooring that was retrieved during the renovation of Heathrow’s famous Terminal 2.

Naturally, once Redditors in the SpottedonRightmove thread found the listing online, the comments were alive with puns.

‘I remember seeing this before. Really liked it. You might even say it was always on my mind,’ @Glass_Box_6291 joked. ‘I’ll show myself out.’

‘That’s lovely, shame about the location though. Would prefer to go west,’ @Visual-Economist5479 added, referencing both the iconic 1986 single West End Girls and 1993’s Go West.

And there was an obvious jibe made by @yalkeryli, who simply wrote: ‘Thought it would be to rent.’

Meanwhile, others reflected on what the area was like at the time.

‘I lived just around the corner from there in the early 90s…Clerkenwell was not cool back then,’ @strolls reminisced. ‘I lived in a squat in an old pub, and it was very quiet at weekends. But it was so convenient for the west end and city.’

This isn’t the only property previously owned by one of the stars to hit the market. Earlier this month, Peter Cushing’s former family home went up for sale in Croydon to the tune of £995,000.

Peter is best known for his role as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars, for which he was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. To this day, his memory is commemorated with a blue plaque at St James’ Road in Purley, where he grew up.

Peter, who famously appeared in more than 100 films including The Revenge of Frankenstein, The Hound of the Baskervilles and Dracula, lived at the address between 1925 and 1936, when he attended Purley County Secondary School.

Likewise, in September Boy George’s five-bedroom Hampstead home went up for rent for £65,000 per month.

Having bought it 40 years ago after Culture Club first shot to the top of the charts, the singer is now looking for a tenant for the property. It was originally put on the market £17,000,000 in November 2022, and he remains happy ‘whether we sell or whether we rent.’

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