Memory and art: London's 900 blue plaques

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 there Society of Arts to start the project in 1866 at the suggestion of the liberal politician William ewart, starting the tradition of marking with a simple and elegant symbol the places in London where some of the greatest personalities in history lived or worked: from scientists of the caliber of Isaac Newton to artists like Vincent Van Gogh, from Alfred Hitchcock a Charles Dickens, from Sigmund Freud a Oscar Wilde o Virginia Woolf and politicians abound, but luckily the spirit of the plaques remains placidly apolitical.

The idea started from ewart in 1863 and its realization also contributed to the famous designer and theorist of industrial design Henry cole. Over time, the commemorative plates have changed shape and colour, going from blue to the cheaper brownish one, due to the needs of the manufacturer of the time, i.e. the Minton, Hollins & Co. The Society of Arts he made 35 in all, of which only half survived. Later, in 1901, the so-called "blue plate pattern" came under the supervision of the London County Council, who decided to standardize the color by opting for the now classic cobalt blue. The scheme (the oldest in the world) was then entrusted to Greater London Council in '65 and finally atEnglishHeritage (since 1986) which safeguards the plaques and produces new ones (as well as selling the original reproductions for £42,50).

The rules, first of all… we are English

For those who want to visit London in a somewhat different, we recommend a volume that English Heritage, which today has responsibility for plaques, has published on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the first placement of Lord Byron's commemorative plaque.

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 Angelheart, Vice News' London correspondent, wrote a very nice piece on London's 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

Here you are at your destination. A round cobalt blue plaque is affixed to an anonymous 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 defended the rights of the East End's poor, bought the building of Vallance Road in 1926 and soon developed 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 a app

London has recently celebrated 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 importance. There's one about the cryptographer's house Alan Turing, who served England during WWII, but also where John Lennon wrote his songs in 1968, about the house of Winston Churchill and on that of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, on the former barn where in 1820 a group of conspirators ordered (unsuccessfully) the assassination of the 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, the charity which manages the country's historic buildings and monuments, has launched theapp free Blue Plates, which indicates 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 (maker of wigs for the theatre), Prince Peter Kropotkin (anarchist theorist) e Hertha Ayrton (physicist who invented a device used in the trenches to disperse poisonous gas).

At number 7 of Bruce Whole grained, Tottenham, in north London, the place where he was born and died is indicated”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 the writer Samuel Beckett, as well as a Fred Bulsar, better known as Freddy Mercury, the leader of the Queen, whose family moved to the Wis London from Zanzibar in 1967. Today a blue plaque marks the house where the young man is said to have Freddy Mercury spent hours locked in the bathroom styling his hair.

The plate builders

Since 1984, the ceramists have been building the plaques Frank e Sue Ashworth, who fire and varnish each plaque (19,5cm diameter by 2cm thick, based on clay, feldspar, sand and grog) in their studio in Cornwall, in which they reproduce the original letters of the craftsmen of yesteryear, a process in which tradition surpasses 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 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.