Dominatrix Madame Lash sells $6m Surry Hills sex chapel, home of AC/DC Let There Be Rock video
Madame Lash, the eccentric dominatrix, has sold The Kirk, her longtime investment property in Surry Hills, for $6m
Gretel Pinniger, aka Madame Lash, the eccentric dominatrix, has sold The Kirk, her longtime investment property in Surry Hills, for $6m.
The deconsecrated church once used for wild parties was marketed by JLL with its emphasis on it having a flexible B4 Mixed Use zoning rather than its burlesque past.
Now with approved plans for 24 residential studios, The Kirk on Cleveland St was a gallery and concert space in the 1970s.
AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock was filmed inside the church, with Bon Scott in the pulpit.
The Kirk at 422-424 Cleveland Street Surry Hills
The Newcastle Song by Bob Hudson was reportedly recorded there with a live audience in 1974.
Pinniger purchased the gothic-style building in 1986 for $205,000 from the Methodist Church.
This time the property attracted more than 200 inquiries, undertook 30 inspections and had six registered auction bidders.
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Bondage and discipline queen Gretel Pinniger known as Madame Lash sold off the sex chapel.
The 578sq m property was announced on the market by auctioneer Daien Cooley at $4.5m.
There were 42 bids at auction conducted through JLL agents Willem Watson, Dylan McEvoy and Gordon McFadyen.
Sitting opposite TOGA’s soon-to-be-completed $400m Surry Hills Village proved telling in the enthusiastic buyer interest.
The chapel is a Sydney inner-city icon.
With plenty of potential.
And the 1877 Wesleyan Church also came without heritage restrictions.
There was approval for construction of a mixed-use five-storey, co-living development, with ground floor retail and cultural entertainment venue.
Pinniger briefly had it listed in 2008.
A few years back, the Palm Beach-based Pinniger told the Manly Daily she first mixed with bohemians when she went to Melbourne University in the 1960s.
“To hide the fact I was anything but promiscuous, I portrayed a character, who, when I dressed as her, it seemed anything was possible. I carried a whip – the first time a woman had.”
The music video for the hit song from the 1977 album ”Let There Be Rock” by AC/DC was shot at the Surry Hills Chapel.
AC/DC’s Bon Scott in the pulpit in the Let There Be Rock video shot at the Kirk.
“I’m 71, and I am an old hippie,” she said in the 2016 interview, proud that her art work had been twice hung in the Archibald Prize.
“I am a living work of art,” she once said.
“Who wants to be in a homogenised, washed-clean city with nothing going on except bars where you have to pay $15 to prop up a bar and look at other people?”
Pinniger said most of her time was spent painting in her studio.
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“Several of my paintings were done in the 1960s when I was on acid trips. I never took an acid trip without doing a painting. Acid opened the doors of perception back then. I don’t drink or smoke, but in my time I have tasted the best Bordeaux wines, I have drunk 1945 Chateau Latour (the year of my birth) more than once.”
The chapel has no heritage restrictions.
Pinniger became known for being the long-time secret lover of the late British billionaire publisher Lord Paul Hamlyn after they met at the home of Gordon Barton.
Her biography was published by Allen & Unwin in 2013, written by Sam Everingham, titled Madam Lash: Gretel Pinniger’s Scandalous Life of Sex, Art and Bondage.
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