Historic Plaque Hunt

Historic Plaque Hunt

As you wander around London, you'll see lots of small, blue, circular plaques on the sides and facades of buildings, describing which famous, semifamous, or obscure but brilliant person once lived there. The first was placed outside Lord Byron's birthplace (now no more) by the Royal Society of Arts. There are around 700 blue plaques, erected by different bodies -- you may even find some green ones which originated from Westminster City Council -- but English Heritage now maintains the responsibility, and if you want to find out the latest, check the Web site www.english-heritage.org.uk. Below are some of the highlights:

James Barrie (100 Bayswater Rd., Hyde Park, W2); Hector Berlioz (58 Queen Anne St., Marylebone, W1); Elizabeth Barrett Browning (50 Wimpole St., Marylebone, W1); Robert Browning (17 Warwick Crescent, Hyde Park, W2); Frederic Chopin (4 St. James's Place, St. James's, W1); Sir Winston Churchill (28 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, SW7); Captain James Cook (88 Mile End Rd., Mile End, E1); T. S. Eliot (3 Kensington Court Gardens, Kensington, W8); Mahatma Gandhi (20 Baron's Court Rd., West Kensington, W14); George Frederic Handel (25 Brook St., Mayfair, W1); Karl Marx (28 Dean St., Soho, W1); Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (180 Ebury St., Belgravia, SW1); Sir Isaac Newton (87 Jermyn St., St. James's, SW1); Florence Nightingale (10 South St., Mayfair, W1); George Bernard Shaw (29 Fitzroy Sq., Bloomsbury, W1); Percy Bysshe Shelley (15 Poland St., Soho, W1); Mark Twain (23 Tedworth Sq., Chelsea, SW3); Oscar Wilde (34 Tite St., Chelsea, SW3); William Butler Yeats (23 Fitzroy Rd., Camden, NW1).