It began in London. Liberal MP William Ewart (1798–1869 – not be confused with prime minister William Ewart Gladstone, 1809-98), whose private member’s bill led to the passing of the Public Libraries Act (1850), had another bright idea, the placing of commemorative plaques on the houses of the esteemed. It was in 1863 he first mooted this cunning plan for ‘the places which had been the residences of the ornaments of their history could not be but precious to all thinking Englishmen’. Ewart was fascinating. As well as his interest in libraries and plaques he succeeded in abolishing the death penalty for cattle rustling, for which I’m eternally grateful.

Ewart’s scheme was adopted by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) but it was not until 1867 that the first plaque was erected at 24 Holles Street, which had been Byron’s home. Sadly the building was demolished so the plaque is gone. The oldest plaques still in situ date to 1875 and are dedicated to Napoleon III (King Street) and John Dryden (Gerrard Street). It had been a slow burn; when the London County Council (LCC) took over the scheme in 1901 there were still only 36 plaques. London’s blue plaque scheme has been run by English Heritage since 1985; there are now over 980 in London alone.

This official blue plaque scheme remains only in Greater London, but other similar schemes have sprung up across Britain, among the oldest plaques being a 1937 one in Bournemouth – see below – and some from the 1940s in York. Many schemes have been set up in the last 20 years or so. Here are some highlights from my own area in the South-West…

Warminster (Wilts)
Once the London scheme was established it was inevitable this laudable idea would infiltrate the provinces, albeit with subtly different criteria. One commonality though would be the desire to connect person with place and this is well illustrated in the market town of Warminster where a surprising number of plaques pepper its one main street. ‘The Chantry’ is a notable mid-18th century townhouse whose plaque doesn’t commemorate a Byron or Dryden but local worthies who prospered in a town growing rich from manufacturing cloth and flogging wheat. Believed to have been designed by the Longleat surveyor (c.1755), the Georgian house’s first recorded occupant was a surgeon, John Seagram (1783), his family holding court until another local moneybags, brewer James Bartlett, bought the place in 1889. Of far greater antiquity is the Old Bell Hotel, on the other side of the street, which was recorded as The Bell in 1483, the same year the ‘Princes in the Tower’ disappeared. The front colonnade connects the two plaques as it provided shelter for farmers selling grain while the Wiltshire Volunteers drilled in the backyard. A few plaques begin opening a window on the past history of a place and its people.

Frome (Somerset)
Just across the border is hilly Frome (Somerset) which may have Warminster casting envious eyes for it celebrates more than local worthies; why, everyone from the Duke of Monmouth to the designer of the Forth Bridge and a sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I’m interested in them all but also Elizabeth Rowe, a poet (1674–1737) who died in a cottage here (‘Rook Lane House’). She was dubbed ‘the ornament of her sex and age’ which returns us to Ewart and his plaques raison d’être. Somerset-born Elizabeth Singer Rowe was also an essayist and fiction writer, and one of the Georgian era’s most widely read English authors, her most popular work being Friendship in Death (1728) where the dead write to the living, which sounds very Edgar Allan Poe. The lady also patronised Frome’s local concerns through charitable gestures; it’s no wonder they erected a plaque. When I saw a plaque for ‘Singer’ I assumed it was sewing machines; I was wrong. John Webb Singer (1819–1904) established his Art Metalworks in Frome in 1866, achieving worldwide fame for ecclesiastical work, then monumental brass sculptures, like the statue of Boudicca by Westminster Bridge, ‘Justice’ atop the Old Bailey, and Cromwell outside Parliament, three iconic statues all fashioned in Frome.

Chard (Somerset)
Somerset’s highest town is aptly the home of powered flight (I jest not). Built by John Stringfellow (1799–1883), his contraption became airborne in 1848, just 55 years before the Wright brothers ascended at Kitty Hawk in America in December 1903. So, why haven’t more people heard of Stringfellow? Well, simply because his pioneering powered flight used a model plane; however, he was still the first person in the world to make and fly an engine-driven aeroplane. There’s a ¾-size bronze replica in Chard’s mile-long main street plus a couple of plaques. I wish Frome’s J.W. Singer had made the bronze but nope. Chard’s standout building is its fine pillared Guildhall, which has a plaque to a Chard native who became a pioneering politician. Margaret Bondfield (1873–1953), born and schooled in Chard, Christian, shop worker, socialist, trade unionist and chairman of the TUC (1923), became the UK’s first woman cabinet minister (1929–31) as Minister of Labour. The plaque was unveiled by another female politician, Barbara Castle, in September 1985.

Poole (Dorset)
I’ve crossed another boundary to Poole (Dorset) where they have the world’s second-largest natural harbour and the site of the first Guide camp, on Brownsea Island, in 1907. There’s a statue to the movement’s founder Robert Baden-Powell on the Quay with a plaque of sorts. I’m looking for a couple of artists though and the first has a plaque just behind Baden-Powell who’s stoically staring at his island. Augustus John (1878–1961) was a Welsh-born portraitist who lived at a demolished manor in Poole between 1910 and 1927. His plaque is on The Lord Nelson, which makes sense as I’d imagine he enjoyed the odd tipple, and the plaque says: ‘He drew inspiration from the Quay.’ The brother of fellow artist Gwen John, Augustus was lauded by artist, writer and critic Wyndham Lewis who declared him, ‘A great man of action into whose hands the fairies stuck a brush instead of a sword.’ The plaque for Henry Lamb (1883–1960) is less appositely sited as it’s on a multi-storey car park. This wouldn’t be allowed in London according to current rules where a building must survive in a form the person would recognise. Here, Lamb’s former home, 10 Hill Street, is lost while a vehicle repository provides a nearby flat surface. The London plaque rule makers might look on askance. Lamb meanwhile, born in Adelaide, but moving to the UK as a toddler, was a follower of Augustus John, an artist and doctor who won the Military Cross as a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps in WW1.

Bournemouth (Dorset)
A short hop brings me to Bournemouth, a greenfield resort which didn’t get its so-called ‘First House’ until 1810–12. I’m spoiled for choice. The erector of that house who began it all, Lewis Tregonwell, has a plaque on that building, today’s Royal Exeter Hotel. There’s also literary luminaries such as Tolkien and the Shelleys, but I’m going to finish with two men who scored in business. Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937), the Italian inventor of long-distance radio transmission, is commemorated on the former Madeira Hotel. He was here in June 1898 when he received the world’s first paid radio message from the Isle of Wight. He’d establish his Marconi company in Essex. Walton House meanwhile was the retirement home of W.H. Smith (1792–1865), the founder of another commercial dynasty. Built in 1861–62, the house offered a short-lived relaxation as Smith was dead in 1865, but his business of newsagents and bookshops persisted. {

References
Chambers Biographical Dictionary (1974)
The London Blue Plaque Guide (N. Rennison, 1999)
The Shell Guide to England (ed. J. Hadfield, 1973)
English Heritage