Keith Richards Childhood Home — Dartford, Kent

Keith Richards was born on 18 December 1943 and grew up at 6 Spielman Road in Dartford, Kent — a council house a short distance from Mick Jagger's more comfortable family home. Richards's background was considerably more working-class than Jagger's: his father Bert worked in a factory, and the family home in Spielman Road was a modest terraced council property. His mother Doris was a music lover who encouraged his guitar playing; his maternal grandfather Gus Dupree was a musician who gave Richards his first guitar lessons. The musical inheritance from Doris and Gus Dupree was formative.

Richards's Dartford childhood, and specifically his reconnection with Mick Jagger on Dartford railway station in 1961, set in motion the formation of the Rolling Stones. The two had known each other as young children — they attended the same primary school — before going to different secondary schools. When they met on the platform, Richards recognised the Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records Jagger was carrying, and the conversation that followed led to rehearsals, to Brian Jones, and to the band. The council estate where Richards grew up could hardly have seemed a more different origin point from the global rock and roll empire he would help create.

Dartford has commemorated both Richards and Jagger with various heritage markers. A blue plaque marks the location of Richards's birth (at the maternity home where he was delivered). The railway station has a marker acknowledging the famous meeting. Dartford is accessible from central London by rail in approximately 30 minutes and is the starting point for any serious engagement with the Rolling Stones' origins in southeast England.