The full story
There are places, like London, that have been, and still are, the epicenter of history. London was the heart of the greatest material upheaval in history, the Industrial Revolution. From London finance leads the world. The flood of history has truly passed through the streets of London, leaving indelible marks even on its walls. Every corner of London speaks to the visitor not only with its architecture, its street furniture and the people who pass through it, but also through the testimonies left on the walls of the buildings in the various historical periods. Just look up from the pavement, take a walk, without forgetting to look to the left first, and an intense conversation with the history and culture of the English capital can immediately begin.
This conversation is started by the round colored ceramic plaques that decorate the buildings of London, reminding us who lived there and, in a tweet, what they did. Today we can finally have in our pockets an unmissable repertoire that gives an account of this concrete manifestation of history. It's a “Blue Plaques of London” app for iOS and Android that tells you everything you need to know about London's 900 plaques that are 150 years old. Download it! It's free. For book lovers, there is also a great book published by English Heritage which you can buy here for £16,99. Why not get them both?
A legacy of liberal thought
London's first blue plaque was put up in 1867 on the house where Lord Byron was born, but unfortunately the building was demolished in 1889, so now the oldest existing plaque is the one dedicated to Napoleon III, also dating from 1867.
It was the Society of Arts that started the project in 1866 at the suggestion of the liberal politician William Ewart, starting the tradition of marking the places in London where some of the greatest personalities in history lived or worked with a simple and elegant symbol: from scientists of the caliber of Isaac Newton to artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, from Alfred Hitchcock to Charles Dickens, from Sigmund Freud to Oscar Wilde or Virginia Woolf and politicians abound, but luckily the spirit of the plaques remains placidly apolitical.
The idea started from Ewart in 1863 and the famous designer and industrial design theorist Henry Cole also contributed to its realization. Over time, the commemorative plates have changed shape and color, going from blue to the cheaper brownish one, due to the need of the manufacturer of the time, i.e. Minton, Hollins & Co. The Society of Arts made a total of 35, of which only survived the goal. Later, in 1901, the so-called "blue plate scheme" came under the supervision of the London County Council, which decided to standardize the color by opting for the now classic cobalt blue. The scheme (the oldest in the world) was then entrusted to the Greater London Council in 65 and finally to English Heritage (since 1986) which safeguards the plaques and produces new ones (as well as selling the original reproductions at 42,50 pounds).
The rules, first of all… we are English
They can be seen in the most unexpected places, not only on the most luxurious mansions, but also on rather humble looking houses, and the list of candidates shows no signs of getting shorter. However, each assignment must satisfy very specific criteria: first of all, the candidate must have been dead for at least twenty years or have passed the centenary of his birth and cannot be a fictitious character; he must have made a very important contribution in his field, have spent a long or particularly significant period in London, if foreign, and his reputation must be recognized internationally; a single person cannot receive more than one plaque and also the place of posting is not chosen at random, the facade must be intact or rebuilt faithfully to the previous one, no boundary walls, gates, ecclesiastical or school buildings and not even the Inns of Court and in any case it is essential that the plaques are clearly visible from the street, democratically within everyone's reach.
Katie Engelhart, London correspondent for Vice News, has written a very nice piece on London plaques, published in the New York Times, which we gladly share with our readers. The translation from English is by Ilaria Amurri.
Friend of all in need
To the south, past the gas station, butcher and gym, in a maze of beige-to-brown tenements, you come to a quiet stretch of Vallance Road, the concrete thoroughfare that connects several neighborhoods in the East End of London. A short walk northwest takes you to Bethnal Green Academy, the school from which three female students fled last year to join the Islamic State in Syria. At the same distance, to the southeast, is Fournier Street, where another “enfant terrible” lived, the English artist Tracey Emin, whose most famous work, My Bed (1999), consisted of her unmade bed, sprinkled of cigarettes and used condoms.
Here you are at your destination. A round cobalt blue plaque is affixed to a nondescript brown building: "Mary Hughes / Friend of all in need / Lived and worked here / 1926-1941." How to describe it in a more amiable way? Mary Hughes staunchly championed the rights of the East End's poor, she bought the building in Vallance Road in 1926 and soon transformed it into a center dedicated to education, Christian socialism and trade union activity. She spent many of her most active years there, but she spent the last days of her life as an invalid, after being run over by a tram while marching in defense of the unemployed.
The 150th anniversary of the blue plaques celebrated with an app
This year London celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Blue Plaques, small ceramic tributes dedicated to the most famous and eccentric Londoners (and in some cases to the most sadly famous). The capital sports over 900 official plaques to commemorate prominent figures or places of historical significance. There's one about the home of cryptographer Alan Turing, who served England in WWII, but also where John Lennon wrote his songs in 1968, the home of Winston Churchill and that of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill , on the former barn where in 1820 a group of conspirators ordered (unsuccessfully) the assassination of Prime Minister Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool, and his entire government.
For those with a particular interest in history, plaques are an inspiring alternative to discovering this sprawling city and its layered life. To mark their 150th anniversary, English Heritage, a charity that manages the country's historic buildings and monuments, has launched the free Blue Plaques app, which pinpoints the location of the plaques and describes their historical context. For Londoners these plaques serve to maintain a historical memory, stubbornly reminding them, with their brilliant blue, that great people have done great things in those places, even though some places have now lost their meaning.
Freddy Mercury
To make everything even more curious are the plaques in honor of lesser known citizens, such as Willy Clarkson (creator of wigs for the theater), Prince Peter Kropotkin (anarchist theorist) and Hertha Ayrton (physicist who invented a device used in the trenches to disperse poisonous gases).
Number 7 Bruce Grove, Tottenham, North London, marks the birthplace of 'Luke Howard, 1772-1864 / Inventor of Clouds'. Howard, the son of a Quaker businessman, began working as a pharmacist, but his true passion was the sky and he soon became a self-taught meteorologist. In 1802 he wrote a small pamphlet of 32 pages in which he proposed a system of classification of clouds, divided into cumulus, layers and cirrus clouds. The essay was published in an academic journal and the scholar became a scientific celebrity. Among his innumerable admirers of him there was also Goethe, who even wrote him a letter of praise.
English Heritage continues to accept proposals to post new plaques. This year, one was awarded to writer Samuel Beckett, as well as Fred Bulsara, better known as Freddy Mercury, the leader of Queen, whose family moved to West London from Zanzibar in 1967. Today a blue plaque marks the house in which it is said that the young Freddy Mercury spent hours closed in the bathroom to style his hair.
The plate builders
Since 1984, the potters Frank and Sue Ashworth have been building the plaques, firing and varnishing each plaque (19,5cm in diameter by 2cm thick, based on clay, feldspar, sand and grog) in their studio in Cornwall, where they reproduce the original letters of the craftsmen of yesteryear, a process in which tradition overcomes modernity.
However, in other respects the project is not standing the test of time. This year it was discovered that only 4 plaques are dedicated to Asian or black people and that only 13% are dedicated to women. In an age of controversial commemorations, blue plaque commissioners have been accused of merely dispensing posthumous medals to great British men. In response, English Heritage has acknowledged its lack of "historical sensitivity" and has invited the public to propose new candidates, so that in the future those who stroll through London can lose themselves in a cobalt blue from the horizons
