English Heritage Guide to London's Blue Plaques

English Heritage

Description

The official, illustrated English Heritage guide, with over 950 of London's most interesting inhabitants and their former homes brought to life.'If people want to find out about our London history, they can go and stand for a minute outside and look at a house where we know that person has lived - I think that's just wonderful.' Dame Judi DenchBlue plaques, bearing names both familiar and intriguing, can be found all across the capital. From BOB MARLEY to ALAN TURING, VIRGINIA WOOLF to VINCENT VAN GOGH, MAHATMA GANDHI to EMMELINE PANKHURST, the plaques celebrate an incredible range of London's past residents.Whether they be scientists, sports stars, artists, actors, inventors or politicians this revised and updated English Heritage guide reveals, with wit and insight, the stories of London's most extraordinary men and women and the homes in which they lived.'The blue plaque helps us make poetry from the everyday, infusing the hard materials of the city with the feeling of lives lived: a memory of the past making the present richer.' Antony Gormley, Guardian

Sujets

• Histoire
• Gran Londres
• Reino Unido
• Museum
• United Kingdom
• Greater London
• Great Britain
• Grand Londres
• London
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: September Publishing
• Date de parution: 27 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781910463406
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

The Lives and Homes of London s Most Interesting Inhabitants
Edited by HOWARD SPENCER
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First published in 2016 by September Publishing
Copyright English Heritage 2016
The right of English Heritage to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder
Publisher: Hannah MacDonald Project editor: Charlotte Cole Design: Two Associates, Martin Brown Picture research: Abigail Lelliott Maps: Mark Fenton, Clifford Manlow Proofreader: Beth Hamer Indexer: Stephen Blake Production: Rebecca Gee
Printed in China on paper from responsibly managed, sustainable sources by Everbest Printing Co Ltd
ISBN 978-1-910463-39-0 ePUB ISBN 978-1-910463-40-6
September Publishing www.septemberpublishing.org

English Heritage is a charitable trust; as well as running the capital s plaque scheme, it looks after over 400 ancient monuments across England including Stonehenge, Hadrian s Wall, Dover Castle and Tintagel. The blue plaques scheme is now entirely reliant on donations. Please consider making a donation through our website.
www.english-heritage.org.uk
CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction
Westminster and Pimlico
St James s
Covent Garden and The Strand
Soho and Leicester Square
Mayfair
Belgravia
Marylebone
Paddington and Bayswater
Fitzrovia
Regent s Park
St John s Wood and Maida Vale
Bloomsbury and Holborn
Camden Town to Highgate Hill
Primrose Hill and Belsize Park
Hampstead
Knightsbridge and Queen s Gate
Chelsea
South and Central Kensington
Earl s Court and West Kensington
Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove
Holland Park and Campden Hill
Hammersmith and Fulham
Islington
Hackney
Tower Hamlets
Greenwich
Lewisham
Southwark
Lambeth
Wandsworth
Outer London West - Hounslow to Harrow
Outer London North - Barnet to Redbridge
Outer London South-east - Bexley and Bromley
Outer London South - Croydon to Merton
Outer London South-west - Kingston and Richmond
Acknowledgements
Picture Credits
Dates of Plaque Installation
FOREWORD
T HE plaque is the most common form of public commemoration today, replacing the tombs and statues which fulfilled that role in previous centuries. It is the perfect one for a democratic age, in that all of the people honoured with one, irrespective of their social status, occupation or the decade in which they died, have their names and reason for fame inscribed upon an object of identical design. They thus take their places in an open-air pantheon, growing as the decades pass. Furthermore, they are intrinsically connected with a building of special significance to the life and work of the individual concerned, and some of that person s distinction is shared by the structure in which they resided or worked. As metal, in the form of a crown, confers a mystique when placed upon a human s head, so a piece of ceramic, called a plaque, can do the same to the building on which it is set. It brings together person, place and story in a way done in legends since human time began, but in a specially tangible and objective form. As well as informing passers-by and honouring the dead, it can also play a role in giving further appreciation to a solid structure.
The Blue Plaques scheme of London is the oldest in the United Kingdom. It belongs to the people, in that anyone is free to propose somebody for commemoration on a plaque; but the worthiness of the subject is determined by the panel that I chair, against very high standards of enduring fame. That panel is composed of experts in the British record of every branch of human activity, all bearing national and/ or academic honours, and serving for fixed periods to ensure freshness of approach. They are provided with further detailed information on each candidate, requiring intensive research currently undertaken or overseen by the scheme s resident historian, Howard Spencer. This book is infused with his unmatched knowledge, his profound love of the people and places concerned, and his eye for a sharp one-liner. My own sense of what London is, and what it is to be a Londoner, and has been, is immeasurably enriched by it.
Like the scheme of which it is a distillation, this book keeps faith with past, present and future. It keeps faith with the past, by recognising the Londoners whose lives and work have been of especial benefit to their fellow humanity, and who have made a lasting impact on history. It keeps faith with the present, because the choice of recipients for plaques involves a recognition of what the contemporary world values and thinks worthy of memory and of applause. It also keeps faith with the future, by holding up to it an image of what modern Britain has believed to constitute greatness. Those robust and beautiful ceramic circles - set into a wall, not screwed to it - will last as long as the buildings themselves. In a thousand years from now perhaps a visitor from Australia - or even Mars - will survey the ruins of London, see and read these plaques, and know from them what we were worth as a civilisation.
Professor Ronald Hutton
English Heritage trustee and Chair of the English Heritage Blue Plaques Panel
INTRODUCTION
B LUE plaques are as much a part of the London street-scape as red telephone boxes, plane trees and terraces of stucco and stock brick. Their laconic inscriptions, telling of where famous figures of the past were born, lived, worked and died, have been informing, educating and entertaining passers-by for 150 years.
Lord Byron had the honour of being the recipient of the very first official London plaque, in 1867. The scheme was started by the Society of Arts (now the RSA) the year before, after a suggestion by the MP William Ewart.* In 1901 the plaques scheme was taken on by the London County Council (LCC), and a senior administrator at the council, Laurence Gomme,* was largely responsible for shaping the plaques scheme into a form we would recognise today.
From 1965 the Greater London Council (GLC) took blue plaques into a wider geographical area, reflecting the suburban spread of the capital. Somewhat confusingly, the London blue plaques scheme does not cover the square mile of the City, where the Corporation of London operates its own scheme. (The plaque to Dr Johnson in Gough Square is the single exception to this rule.)
In 1986 the GLC was abolished and the scheme passed to English Heritage, then a government agency, and which became a charitable trust in 2015.
The blue plaque has become, to employ an over-used term, a design icon - and has been much imitated and parodied. The plaques now used in London are 19in (495mm) round, but can be smaller if this better suits a particular building. Made of ceramic slipware, the plaques are inset into walls to a depth of about 2in (50mm). They are the work of skilled craft ceramicists, most recently the Ashworth family. Slightly domed so as to be self-cleaning, they are intended to last for as long as the buildings they adorn.
The design history, however, is complicated. Not all blue plaques are blue, for a start; many of the earlier tablets - to use the term once favoured - were terracotta or brown. Green and grey ceramic has also been used, as have other materials, including bronze, lead, stone and enamelled steel. And just to add to the fun, plaques are not all round either: squares, rectangles and other shapes also feature.
Official plaques almost invariably feature the name of the responsible body in their inscription. The Society of Arts embedded its name discreetly in an intricate border, while the former London Councils put their monikers on more prominent display. The same goes for English Heritage, which added its famous portcullis logo. The exceptions are a handful of plaques that were put up privately and later officially adopted. Some good examples of these may be found in Bloomsbury, where ornate bronze plaques - complete with cherubs - were put up by the landowner, the Bedford Estate.
WHO (OR WHAT) GETS A BLUE PLAQUE - AND HOW?
S INCE the early years of the 20th century the engine of the scheme has been public suggestions, from both individuals and institutions. Today, these are considered by the Blue Plaques Panel - a collection of experts in the broad areas of enterprise and achievement that the plaques commemorate. Similar assemblies, such as the GLC s Historic Buildings Sub-Committee, performed this task in earlier times.
For someone to be considered for a plaque, the present rule is that they need to have been dead for 20 years, so as to be as certain as possible of a figure s enduring reputation. This rule has been in place for some time, with certain variations; until 2013, deceased figures could also be considered if a century had passed since their birth.
One plaque per person is another important rule, but this has not always been the case, either. At one time Charles Dickens had no fewer than four official plaques in London and William Makepeace Thackeray can still boast three.
Careful preparatory work is undertaken before a plaque goes up. A high level of proof is needed of the connection between a person and building, involving the use of evidence culled from such sources as the census, electoral registers, rate books and directories, as well as correspondence and diaries. The widespread renumbering of streets in London is a particular hazard to be navigated.
CELEBRATION - AND CONSERVATION
F ROM the mid-1950s, the most important selection criterion has been that a commemorated person must have made a positive contribution to human welfare and happiness . Well before this, the design of the early-20th-century plaques feature