Famous British singer, guitarist, and songwriter David Gilmour let the crew from www.NewsHub.co.nz take a gander at his peaceful houseboat on the River Thames, and boy was it a treat. When Gilmour first ran across his future home on the water, he explained to the crew how it came about rather on accident.

"Well I was driving down this road here one day in '86 I guess it probably was,” Gilmour told them. “I had been banned from driving for drink driving for a year, being silly. So I was being driven, rather than driving myself, and as you're driven you sort of look out of the windows a lot more and as we drove along we looked, I looked out, and I saw this metal work on the top over the wall, and I said to the chap driving: ‘Can we just pull over here and have a look?’ And we pulled over and we stood on the pavement, we stood on the corner there and peered over and looked down and saw this incredible boat and this water and work on the top. And I though 'Oh, that's fantastic.'"

As chance would have it, Gilmour happened to run into the same houseboat about two weeks later while flipping through Country Life at the dentist’s—and lo and behold, there it was for sale.

“So I rang them up and came down and had a look and bought it. I didn't even think about putting a studio in it at first. It was just very, very beautiful, a magical place,” Gilmour told NewsHub.co.nz.

The houseboat, christened the Astoria, was originally built for music-hall impresario Fred Karno (trainer of Charlie Chaplin, anyone?) a hundred years ago, and its old-time elegance caught Gilmour’s eye from the beginning. Lush with marble in the bathrooms, mother-of-pearl in the light switches, and rich mahogany in the cabins, it really is beyond elegant. One can see how Gilmour received so much musical inspiration while living out his retreat on this houseboat. You can check out some gorgeous pictures at www.neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk.

Photos credited to www.neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk