HERITAGE: BLUE PLAQUES
Oliver Hurley delves into the history of London’s English Heritage blue plaques scheme
The hundreds of blue plaques found on buildings across our capital commemorate the lives of luminaries from philosophers to pharmacists, singers to su!rage"es. But who decides if someone is awarded a plaque, how are they made – and why did a plaque to Karl Marx get destroyed… twice?
You wouldn’t think there could be much to connect Jimi Hendrix with the chemist and meteorologist Luke Howard, or Oscar Wilde with racing driver Graham Hill. But these notable !gures – along with around 950 others – have all been commemorated with blue plaques, the iconic 495mm-diameter discs that sit on buildings across Greater London in order to bring their historic stories to life for passers-by every day. (Pleasingly, the plaque to Howard, who lived from 1772–1864, credits him as ‘Namer of Clouds’.)
The scheme, thought to be the oldest of its type in the world, dates from the 1860s, a"er the MP William Ewart suggested the idea in the House of Commons. The Society of Arts took the initiative on in 1866 and installed the !rst two plaques the following year, to Lord Byron and Napoleon III. The house with Byron’s plaque, his birthplace, was demolished in 1889 but Napoleon III’s plaque survives to this day and can still be seen at 1c King Street, Westminster. Ewart himself has two plaques, in Belgravia and Hampton, which recognise his work as a reformer and backer of public libraries.