Garden Lodge
The wall that has been saying it since 1991
Freddie Mercury bought Garden Lodge – a late-Victorian house with a walled Japanese-style garden – in 1980 and lived here until his death on 24 November 1991, aged 45, of bronchopneumonia brought on by AIDS. The wall of Garden Lodge has been covered continuously since then with fans’ messages and tributes.
Mercury was famously private; he never publicly came out, but in his last years was open with those who loved him about both his sexuality and his diagnosis. He left the house to his companion Mary Austin, who still lives there; it went on the market in 2025 for the first time in 46 years. He lived here eleven years – he gardened, he cooked, he collected Japanese art. He never said the word, but the wall outside has been saying it for him every day since 1991.