New Blue Plaque

There’s something wonderfully understated about London’s humble blue plaques.

They sit discreetly on the walls of houses, flats or warehouses, in most cases adding no value to the property on which they perch, but offering a tantalising glimpse into the past. While a statue may give you a likeness of whoever it commemorates, a plaque lets you see where the person lived and provides a tangible link to the past. You know the streets they must have walked and perhaps even the neighbours they might have had. More often than not the plaque commemorates a birthplace or residence in early life, giving an intimate insight into these individuals’ lives before they achieved that for which they would eventually become known.

Earlier this year a new English Heritage blue plaque was unveiled to Graham Greene on the wall of 14 Clapham Common North Side. The author lived there during the war from 1935 to 1940 and narrowly missed being killed when a bomb hit the property in October 1940. By good fortune he was staying with his lover in Bloomsbury that evening, but he used the incident in his novel, The End of the Affair, which is set in Clapham and in which various local places including St Mary’s Church can easily be identified.

Other examples of heritage memorials in our area include 87 Hackford Road in Stockwell. Without its blue plaque most of us would never have known that Vincent Van Gogh lived in London from 1873-84. His stay in the modest house was in fact a formative part of his life. Having been sent to London by his employer, a Parisian art dealer, the 19 year-old Van Gogh had the misfortune to fall in love with his landlady’s daughter. His affections were not returned and it is this rejection that many biographers believe sparked Van Gogh’s darkened approach to life, and which eventually led to his leaving his job and taking up painting.

At number 26 Gwendolen Avenue, Putney, there is a blue plaque to commemorate Dr Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovak Prime Minister from 1921-22, and a man singled out by Hitler as a terrorist and a madman - suggesting he must have been doing something right. Sir Charles Barry, who designed the current Palace of Westminster, has also been honoured with a plaque at his former residence at The Elms on Clapham Common North Side. Dame Margaret Rutherford, who for many is the definitive Miss Marple, has a plaque at 4 Berkeley Place in Wimbledon, while former Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, has his name on the wall of 3 Routh Road in Wandsworth Common.

Perhaps the most moving though is that of Violette Szabó, the British agent who was shot by the Germans during World War II, having been captured while fighting with the French resistance. Having joined the Special Operations Executive after her the death of her husband, she volunteered to be dropped into occupied France not once, but twice. Such heroics had humble beginnings though with the young Violette growing up at 18 Burnley Road in Stockwell, the daughter of a Brixton car salesman.

In all, English Heritage receives about 100 suggestions for blue plaques each year, of which it accepts around one in three, leaving a growth rate of roughly 12 a year. For those that are rejected, there is a mandatory 20 year wait before resubmission, while even those that pass the stringent scrutiny of the historians are not assured longevity. The blue plaques have no intrinsic effect on a building’s listing, and consequently, no effect on the building’s future. This was the case for the ill-fated Captain Lawrence Oates, of ‘I am just going outside, and may be some time’ fame, who lived at 309 Upper Richmond Road. His heroism in sacrificing himself on Scott’s doomed expedition to Antarctica is well documented, but was not enough to save his residence from demolition.