Even more mysteriously, nobody knows exactly why Gilmour ditched his South Oxfordshire manor. The pool table was left mid-game, while an old piano was left in the music studio and rooms have been seen with peeling wallpaper and rotting furniture.
Gilmour originally purchased Hook End Manor in 1980. It was an 11-bedroom mansion costing £1million at the time, having been built by the Bishop of Reading in 1580.
That studio has seen albums recorded by Manic Street Preachers, The Cure and Marillion. But by 1987, Gilmour had given up the mansion for a mysterious reason.
He wasn’t the home’s last owner. In the mid-1990s, The Buggles star Trevor Horn purchased the property, changing its name to Sarm West Studios. Tragically, the home would be the site of a shooting that led to further tragedy for the family.
(Image: mediadrumimages/AbandonedBeautie)
Trevor’s wife Jill Sinclair, who co-founded ZTT Records, was accidentally shot by the couple’s son Aaron, who was practicing with an air rifle and didn’t realise his mother was close by. She fell into a coma and suffered irreversible brain damage – and shortly after, Trevor sold the house and moved out in 2007.
Jill sadly died years later in 2014 from cancer; though she did emerge from her coma, she could not “speak, move or smile” and “the only expression she could show [was] of discomfort”.
The home was subsequently bought by Mark White, who used the studio commercially, but the company folded in 2014. Since 2017, the house has stood completely abandoned and left to rot.
(Image: Getty)
