Syd Barrett's later home — St Margaret's Square, Cambridge

Syd Barrett returned to Cambridge in the early 1970s following his departure from Pink Floyd and his unsuccessful solo career, moving into the family home at St Margaret's Square with his mother Winifred, where he lived in near-total reclusion until her death and then until his own on July 7, 2006, from pancreatic cancer. He was 60. The twenty-five years he spent in the Cambridge house were marked by occasional sightings by fans and journalists who tracked him to the address, and by his complete withdrawal from the music world that had once revolved around him. He gardened, painted, watched television, and lived quietly in the city where he had grown up.

Barrett's Cambridge years became one of rock music's most persistent myths: the genius undone by mental illness and psychedelic excess, living anonymously in a suburban house while his former bandmates became one of the largest acts in the world. Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here (1975) was explicitly an elegy for Barrett — 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' was written about him — and was recorded while he was living thirty miles away, unknown to the band until he turned up unannounced at the Abbey Road sessions, so changed in appearance that they initially failed to recognise him. The encounter became legendary.

The house at St Margaret's Square is a private residence in a quiet residential area of Cambridge. It drew a steady stream of fans during Barrett's lifetime and continues to be visited by those working through the Pink Floyd geography of Cambridge. Barrett's estate has managed his recordings and visual art — he was a prolific painter in his later years — since his death. His grave is at Cam Road Cemetery in Cambridge.