Synoptic chart · pressure falling · Welling to Haworth
She wrote Hounds of Love where she could see the weather coming for miles. Here the weather is her working life: twelve clouds, twelve real places.
Twelve places · 1975 to 2019
Cloudbusting came from A Book of Dreams, the true story of Wilhelm Reich and his machine for making rain. Aim the pipes, break a cloud, and a real place falls out of it.
Twelve clouds over the downs. Aim the pipes.
Dry so far. The pipes point straight up, at 1985.
Lewisham · March 1977
The KT Bush Band played its first show here in March 1977. The band was Kate Bush with Del Palmer on bass, Brian Bath on guitar and Vic King on drums. They played two 45-minute sets.
An empty back room on Lee High Road. Let them in.
Peter Watts puts that first crowd at about 30. Far Out says around a dozen, friends among them.
The band first rehearsed in a room beside the boiler room at Greenwich Swimming Baths, and bought its PA with EMI money at a music shop on Rushey Green.
The building at 162 Lee High Road. Look at it from the pavement; the photograph shows the road.
From 1975 · Covent Garden, London
EMI signed her in 1975, at 16, and gave her three years for “artistic development”. She spent them learning to dance.
She went to open classes at the Dance Centre in Covent Garden, taught by Lindsay Kemp, who had studied with Marcel Marceau and taught David Bowie mime. Kemp later choreographed for her.
Covent Garden’s streets are free to walk. The photograph shows Floral Street there.
The Tour of Life · April and May 1979
She wanted to sing and dance at once, so she and the live sound engineer invented the first headset microphone.
Each night ran to 22 songs, with several costume changes, magicians, mimes, back projections and dance. She did not talk to the audience between songs: it was like a play, she said.
On a cable, by the microphone stand.
2 April 1979 · Poole
A year later her only tour began here, with a warm-up show on 2 April 1979. The lighting engineer Bill Duffield died after a fall at that show.
She was devastated, and almost cancelled the tour. It opened as Poole Arts Centre on 1 April 1978.
Poole Arts Centre is now Lighthouse, an arts centre on Kingland Road. Go in for a show.
3 April 1979 · Liverpool
The Tour of Life opened on 3 April 1979. That evening BBC Nationwide gave her a 25-minute special; its reporter said she could not afford to fail.
The programme ended with a short post-gig chat with her at the Liverpool Empire, exhausted and exhilarated. She had drilled her eight-piece band at Wood Wharf Studio in Greenwich, south London.
A working theatre on Lime Street. Go in for a show.
May 1979 · Hammersmith
The Tour of Life ended here in 1979, when it was the Hammersmith Odeon.
Mojo counts 24 shows between 2 April and 14 May 1979.
Now the Eventim Apollo. Go in for a concert or a comedy night.
Abbey Road · Never for Ever, 1980
It was the album on which she started on the Fairlight, an early sampler. On Army Dreamers the sound of a rifle being cocked is used as percussion.
SAMPLE 1 · RIFLE, COCKED · 16 STEPS
Sample 1 loaded: a rifle, cocked. Tap a step.
Silent here: the page plays no sound.
Never for Ever, 1980 · 3 Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, London
She made Never for Ever here. The building’s history excited her: from Elgar to the Beatles, she said, the walls had soaked it up.
A working studio. See the front from the pavement on Abbey Road; there is no way in.
Abbey Road’s Jim Jones, who became her friend in the 1980s, ran the technical side of Never for Ever and of Hounds of Love.
Two years later, on The Dreaming, she was the sole producer for the first time.
Welling · Hounds of Love, 1985
She made Hounds of Love in her own 48-track studio, built in an old barn next to the family home. She called building it the best decision she ever made.
She composed most of the album on a Fairlight CMI sampler. She wrote the songs, she says, in a tiny room over fields, where she could see the weather coming for miles.
The second side of Hounds of Love is The Ninth Wave. Go under.
Welling, south-east London: a private family home
The Bush family home: a farmhouse, parts of it more than 400 years old, still owned by the family.
By the time she grew up there it was suburban, with fields behind it and barns, stables and horses nearby.
A private family home. Named here, never mapped; the photograph shows East Wickham Open Space nearby, not the house.
27 February 2019 · Windmill Lane, Dublin docklands
On 27 February 2019 a walkway of 21 album sleeves made at the studio’s original docklands site was unveiled on Windmill Lane. Hounds of Love is one of them.
The sleeves sit under perspex in the pavement and are lit so you can see them at night.
A redeveloped docklands street; the sleeves are set into the pavement. The studio now works from 20 Ringsend Road, where it runs hour-long tours.
Dublin 4 · €26
A 50- to 60-minute tour of the working studio on Ringsend Road for up to 15 people; mix a session with a virtual band. Adults €26.
Book a tourUffington, Oxfordshire · Cloudbusting, 1985
Stop 1 of 5 · The car park
National Trust land, open dawn to dusk. Non-members pay £2 for two hours’ parking or £4 a day (sat nav SN7 7QJ). Steep and uneven in places.
Stop 1: The car park. Keep climbing.
Uffington, Oxfordshire · Parking from £2
Walk up from the car park to the White Horse, Dragon Hill and Uffington Castle, where the Cloudbusting video was made. Open dawn to dusk; parking £2 for two hours or £4 a day for non-members.
Plan a walkWoolstone, Oxfordshire
An inn named after the chalk horse on the hillside above it, with five en-suite rooms, for walking White Horse Hill and the Ridgeway.
Check roomsThornton to Haworth · about eight miles
The four Brontë Stones link the sisters’ birthplace in Thornton with the parsonage, along about eight miles of the path they are thought to have walked. She and Emily Brontë share a birthday, 30 July. She did read Wuthering Heights, she says, but she wrote the song first.
Thornton: The Brontë sisters’ birthplace, where the stones begin.
Start in Thornton and walk towards Haworth. The second stop is hers.
Hammersmith · 2014
Thirty-five years after the Tour of Life she came back here for 22 sold-out nights in 2014, called Before the Dawn.
Hammersmith, 2014. Thirty-five years since the last night here. Light the first night.
Fifteen were announced for August and September 2014; seven more were added when those sold out.
She produced the live album herself. Nothing on it was re-recorded or overdubbed.
The show is built round two long pieces, The Ninth Wave and A Sky of Honey. It won the Editor’s Award at the London Theatre Awards. Abbey Road’s Jim Jones worked on the residency.
A Sky of Honey is one piece following a summer’s day; on its album, Aerial, the cover shows the sound wave of a blackbird’s song.
Now the Eventim Apollo. Go in for a concert or a comedy night.
11 places you can visit. East Wickham Farm is a private family home and Pinewood a closed working studio, so neither is on the map.
Pins mark public places; private homes are named but not pinned.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: area · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Covent Garden’s streets are free to walk. The photograph shows Floral Street there.
General reference · Restricted access · Coordinate precision: site · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. The building at 162 Lee High Road. Look at it from the pavement; the photograph shows the road.
General reference · Public access · Coordinate precision: building · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. Now the Eventim Apollo. Go in for a concert or a comedy night.
General reference · Restricted access · Coordinate precision: site · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. A working studio. See the front from the pavement on Abbey Road; there is no way in.
Covent Garden, London
EMI signed her in 1975, at 16, and gave her three years for “artistic development”. She spent them learning to dance.
Covent Garden’s streets are free to walk. The photograph shows Floral Street there.
162 Lee High Road, Lewisham, south-east London
The KT Bush Band played its first show here in March 1977.
The building at 162 Lee High Road. Look at it from the pavement; the photograph shows the road.
Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith, London
The Tour of Life ended here in 1979, when it was the Hammersmith Odeon.
Now the Eventim Apollo. Go in for a concert or a comedy night.
3 Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, London
She made Never for Ever here. The building’s history excited her: from Elgar to the Beatles, she said, the walls had soaked it up.
A working studio. See the front from the pavement on Abbey Road; there is no way in.
Stay
An inn named after the chalk horse, for climbing the hill where Cloudbusting was filmed.
Woolstone, Oxfordshire
An inn named after the chalk horse on the hillside above it, with five en-suite rooms, for walking White Horse Hill and the Ridgeway.
Check roomsGo there
White Horse Hill, the Brontë Parsonage, the Windmill Lane studio tour in Dublin and Reich’s museum, plus music and Brontë-country tours on the marketplace.
Uffington, Oxfordshire · Parking from £2
Walk up from the car park to the White Horse, Dragon Hill and Uffington Castle, where the Cloudbusting video was made. Open dawn to dusk; parking £2 for two hours or £4 a day for non-members.
Plan a walkHaworth, West Yorkshire · £15
The Brontës’ home in Haworth, where the stones walk ends. Open Wednesday to Monday, 10am to 5pm, last entry 4pm. £15 standard; the ticket lasts a year.
Book ticketsDublin 4 · €26
A 50- to 60-minute tour of the working studio on Ringsend Road for up to 15 people; mix a session with a virtual band. Adults €26.
Book a tourRangeley, Maine · $10
Reich’s laboratory and observatory in western Maine, with a cloudbuster in the woods. Open July and August, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons, and Saturdays in September; trails every day.
2026 season ended · reopens in summer
Plan a visitLondon
Live marketplace results for London music walking tours. Check each itinerary for Abbey Road and the West End.
Live marketplace results · itineraries change
Compare toursWest Yorkshire
Live marketplace results for day trips to Haworth and the moors from Leeds, York and Manchester.
Live marketplace results · itineraries change
Compare toursWhat’s on
A tribute band and a string quartet play her albums in order in Liverpool Cathedral in November. Kate Bush does not perform.
Checking current event dates…
Take it home
An original 1985 Hounds of Love poster from our store, Graeme Thomson’s biography, and four records from The Kick Inside to Before the Dawn.
An original 1985 poster for the album made in the barn at home. Art by John Carder Bush. 20 × 30 in, rolled, mint.
In stock
View posterGraeme Thomson
Graeme Thomson’s biography of her life and music.
Find the bookKate Bush · Vinyl LP, EMI EMC 3223, 1978
The first album, with Wuthering Heights.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyKate Bush · Vinyl LP, EMI 1C 064-07 339, 1980
Made at Abbey Road: the first Fairlight, and a rifle for percussion.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyKate Bush · Vinyl LP, EMI KAB 1, 1985
Made in the barn studio at home; Cloudbusting and The Ninth Wave.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyKate Bush · 4-LP set, Fish People, 2016
Twenty-two nights at Hammersmith, with nothing overdubbed.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyDates, prices, rooms and stock change: confirm with the provider before you travel or buy. A stay or tour is described as a filming location only where the card says so.
Every place and moment behind this page, with sources.
13 of 13 places · 17 of 17 Moments
Covent Garden, London
EMI gives her three years; she spends them in Lindsay Kemp’s open dance classes.
162 Lee High Road, Lewisham, south-east London
The KT Bush Band plays its first show at the Rose of Lee.
A month on, people cannot get in to see her.
Welling, south-east London: a private family home
Hounds of Love made in her own studio in a barn by the family home.
21 Kingland Road, Poole, Dorset
The Tour of Life begins with a warm-up at Poole Arts Centre; Bill Duffield dies after a fall.
Lime Street, Liverpool
The tour opens; Nationwide films her and talks to her after the show at the Empire.
She and her sound engineer invent the headset microphone so she can sing and dance.
Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith, London
The Tour of Life ends at the Hammersmith Odeon.
Before the Dawn: her first run of shows since 1979, 22 nights, all sold out.
The live album comes out, produced by her, with nothing re-recorded.
Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire
And Dream of Sheep sung live in a water tank at Pinewood, for the show.
3 Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, London
Never for Ever at Abbey Road: the Fairlight arrives, and a cocked rifle becomes percussion.
Windmill Lane, Dublin docklands
Hounds of Love among 21 sleeves set into Windmill Lane.
Uffington, Oxfordshire
Kate Bush and Donald Sutherland climb White Horse Hill for Cloudbusting.
19 Orgonon Circle, Rangeley, Maine, USA
At Reich’s estate in Maine a cloudbuster still points at his tomb.
Ogden Kirk, on the moor above Ogden Water, near Haworth
Her words for Emily Brontë carved at Ogden Kirk.
Church Street, Haworth, West Yorkshire
Four stones between Thornton and the Haworth parsonage.
