The legends who lived here

Words: Gareth Herincx

The idea of erecting “memorial tablets” was first proposed by William Ewart MP in the House of Commons in 1863 to mark the homes and workplaces of famous people. The first person honoured was poet Lord Byron (1788-1824) in 1867 with a blue plaque commemorating his birthplace at 24 Holles Street, Cavendish Square, London.

There are now more than 900 plaques across London, plus hundreds of others across the UK, though they are not always round and blue or sanctioned by English Heritage.

Follow the Great West Way from London to Bristol and you’ll find a fascinating cross section of society reflected in the plaques. A tour of them all would provide enough material for a book, so here we’ve chosen a combination of significant and quirky examples - from a Hollywood legend to the world’s most famous dog. Our journey into the past takes us out of the central London hotspot for plaques (where some properties have two each) to 40 Sandycombe Road, Twickenham - a house designed by artist J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851).

He’s thought to have lived there with his father between 1812 and 1826. Back then it was surrounded by countryside, now it’s hemmed in on all sides by London suburbia.

West of Twickenham in the London Borough of Hounslow you’ll find the town of Feltham. It’s here at 22 Gladstone Avenue, TW14, that 17-year-old Freddie Mercury (1946- 1991) settled with his parents after emigrating from Zanzibar in 1964.

The Queen frontman was living in the modest semidetached home when he met two other members of the band - Brian May and Roger Taylor - and the rest is history.

Freddie Mercury blue plaque with Brian May ©English Heritage

Staying with music, composer Edward Elgar (1857- 1934) is best associated with the Malvern Hills which inspired many of his most popular compositions.

However, he was also a regular visitor to Berkshire, and often stayed and composed - most notably his renowned Cello Concerto - at a mansion in Monkey Island Lane, Bray, Maidenhead.

The house was later named Long White Cloud (the Maori name for New Zealand) by a more recent resident, Formula One legend Stirling Moss.

You’ll find the pretty village of Cookham three miles north of Maidenhead, once home to Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932), author of The Wind in the Willows.

He lived with his grandmother at The Mount in Cookham Dean and it’s generally accepted that the river scenes in the children’s classic were inspired by the stretch between Cookham and Henley with Winter Hill above it.

Just over 10 miles further west, you will find Caversham’s award-winning pub, The Fox & Hounds where (in 1960) Paul McCartney and John Lennon played their only gig as The Nerk Twins just before they formed The Beatles. The blue plaque is on the wall just before you step inside - where it is also said the pair worked behind the bar on occasion, where at the time Paul’s cousin ran the pub.

Blue plaques don’t just celebrate the great and the good - buildings can get the star treatment too. Travel a little further west to Thatcham in Berkshire and you’ll find a plaque outside another pub - The Kings Head in the Broadway, commemorating where Britain’s first mail coach changed horses at the old coaching inn between Bristol and London on August 3, 1784.

Up until then, it took two to three days for post to travel from London to Bristol, but the stage coach system cut this down to just over 16 hours by dividing the route into stages with fresh horses at each stop.

Head west from Thatcham to the market town of Newbury. Best known for its racecourse, there’s also a large plaque commemorating renowned civil engineer John Rennie (1761-1821) and Newbury Lock - the first to be built on the Kennet & Avon Canal.

The Scot was the brains behind the completion of the canal, and its network of locks, which opened in 1810 and meant that goods could be transported between London and Bristol rather than by the often hazardous sea route.

Cross the border into Oxfordshire, close to the White Horse at Uffington, and you’ll find Garrard’s Farmhouse where poet John Betjeman (1906-1984) lived with his wife Penelope between 1934 and 1945.

Knighted in 1969 and appointed Poet Laureate in 1972, lines from his short poem, Uffington, were set into the floor at London St Pancras station (which he helped save) - “Imprisoned in a cage of sound/ Even the trivial seems profound”.

The great diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) is most associated with the City of London, but he travelled widely, hence a blue plaque in Marlborough, Wiltshire.

He stayed for a night with his wife at the Hart Inn in 1688 after a tour of the West Country. The inn no longer exists, but a plaque can be found on the north side of the High Street next to a doorway. He wrote: “Before night, come to Marlborough, and lay at the Hart; a good house, and a pretty fair town for a street or two...”

The London to Bristol route via Bath through Wiltshire, was described by Pepys as one of England’s finest coaching routes. You’ll find the town of Swindon about 12 miles from Marlborough. Home to the “Magic Roundabout” (which features five mini-roundabouts arranged around a sixth central, anticlockwise roundabout), it was also the birthplace of actress Diana Dors, who was seen as the British Marilyn Monroe back in the 1950s.

Actress Diana Dors Blue Plaque

Born Diana Mary Fluck, she died in 1984 aged 52 and a blue plaque celebrating her can be seen at 61 and 62 Kent Road SN1 - once the Haven Nursing Home.

The market town of Chippenham is 10 minutes west of Swindon by train. Before you leave the station, walk over to a nondescript single-storey building in the forecourt where you’ll see a plaque commemorating Isambard Kingdom Brunel - the creator of the Great Western line. The building, which is still in use today, was Brunel’s site office and its styling echoes the original 1841 station.

There’s also a fascinating footnote to the history of rock’n’roll in Chippenham because it was here that American star Eddie Cochran (1938-1960) was killed when the taxi carrying him from a show in Bristol crashed en route to London.

Popular and hugely influential among fellow musicians, his hits included Summertime Blues and C’mon Everybody. His plaque at Rowden Hill (the scene of the accident), is mounted on three stone steps, each inscribed with lyrics from his posthumous UK No 1 - Three Steps To Heaven.

Head west by road via the A4 and you’ll come to the picture postcard town of Bradford on Avon – home to British Olympic gold medal winner Ed McKeever. The 35-year-old won the men’s 200m (K-1 200m) kayak sprint at the London 2012 games and the Royal Mail marked his achievement with a special stamp and a gold-painted postbox which can still be seen in The Shambles.

British Olympic gold medal winner Ed McKeever’s gold-painted postbox

A 10-minute train ride takes you from Bradford on Avon to Bath which was founded by the Romans as a thermal spa and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Writer Jane Austen (1775-1817) is arguably Bath’s best known former resident, though she only lived in the city from 1801 to 1806. It did, however, provide the inspiration for Northanger Abbey. You can see her bronze plaque at 4 Sydney Place.

There’s another bronze plaque a short walk away at 19 New King Street honouring astronomer William Herschel (1738-1822). Born in Hanover, he migrated to Britain at the age of 19 and was later joined by his sister Caroline (1750–1848) - also a noted astronomer.

It was from this house, using a telescope of his own design, that he discovered the planet Uranus in 1781. Their former home is now the site of the Herschel Museum of Astronomy.

The last leg of our Great West Way blue plaque tour takes us to Bristol where Hollywood movie legend Cary Grant (1904-1986) was born Archibald Alec Leach. The star of North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief is celebrated in the biennial Cary Grant Comes Home Festival in Bristol and his blue plaque can be found at 15 Hughenden Road where he was born.

Hollywood movie legend Cary Grant

Finally, we celebrate one of the most recognised dogs in the world. Known as the HMV dog, Nipper the terrier cross was painted sitting with his ear to a wind-up gramophone and featured on hundreds of millions of records produced by the His Master’s Voice label for more than a century. Head to the corner of Park Row and Woodland Road BS1 to see a blue plaque devoted to Nipper (1884-1895) and his master Mark Berraud.

Nipper “ featured on hundreds of millions of records produced by the His Master’s Voice label for more than a century