Blue Plaques in London

Blue plaques can be found in almost every district of London. They offer a wonderful way to trace the city’s past. Anyone exploring London’s history will have to decide which stories they want to uncover. The many hotels and holiday apartments in London can help you decide where to stay: with around 800 blue plaques in London, you’ll need plenty of time to visit them all, as well as a good place to rest and sleep. London is known for city breaks and short trips, so why rush? You can discover London’s blue plaques gradually on a series of short trips, if you wish.

A journey into London’s history guided by its blue plaques is a journey to the people who enriched the city with their ideas, innovations, ways of living, loving and fighting, or through their politics. They include celebrated journalists, actors, writers, politicians, artists, scientists, athletes, campaigners and reformers. To this day, London has well over 800 blue plaques. Browse the list and, even at the letter A, you’ll find remarkable figures such as Nancy Astor, the first woman to be given a seat in Parliament. To stand before the first of London’s blue plaques, you’ll have to travel back to 1867. This first commemorative plaque in London was dedicated to the poet Lord Byron. The idea of honouring a city’s people, preserving their names for posterity and associating them with places they knew in their lifetimes came from William Ewart MP. In 1863, he founded the first organisation to set, among other things, the guidelines for selecting the people commemorated by London’s blue plaques. Today, English Heritage is responsible for developing the blue plaque programme in London. Its aim is to add 10 to 15 plaques each year. The most recent blue plaque in London was dedicated to Charles Rolls on 22 March 2010. He is regarded as the father of motoring clubs in Britain. His plaque can be found in Mayfair, London, where he was born in 1877. Other blue plaques can be found in Kensington, Westminster, Soho, Chelsea, Primrose Hill and Soho.

A pilot project also succeeded in installing plaques in cities such as Liverpool, Birmingham, Southampton and Portsmouth between 1998 and 2005. London’s blue plaques are one of the world’s oldest systems for commemorating people with dignity. Similar schemes can be found in Paris, Rome and Dublin.