Astoria (houseboat)

Astoria is a large houseboat moored on the River Thames at Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. It was built in 1911 for the music hall impresario Fred Karno, who ran the Karsino Hotel on nearby Tagg's Island, after he took advice from the owner of the houseboat Satsuma and had his stage carpenter build scale models. Its hull was laid down at Brentford and local workmen added the superstructure, including a sun deck ninety feet long that could hold an orchestra and a dance floor, at a reported cost of 7,500 pounds. After Karno's bankruptcy in 1926 the music hall singer Vesta Victoria bought it and lived aboard until 1951. In 1986 the Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour bought it and converted it into a floating recording studio, where parts of several Pink Floyd and solo albums were recorded.