Blue Plaques
It is impossible to know what is literally meant by the idea of The Big Society, but it is conceivable that it means getting to know our neighbours a little better. Since its inception in 1866, the blue plaque scheme has outstripped any local gossip in its capacity to reveal the personal details of the people next door. In London, one of these round emblems on the front of your house has become something akin to a badge of honour. From the very first, erected in memory of Lord Byron’s time spent at 24 Holles Street (the house was later bulldozed), the idea was that buildings would become their own biographers.
Recently, Oscar Wilde’s tiny flat in Chelsea was for sale. Its price was hyped not only by its exclusive location on Tite Street, but also by dint of the permanent advert on the stucco. That, as if by osmosis, his unique talents might rub off on a new occupant sleeping in the room where he wrote An Ideal Husband.
Similar schemes exist all over the country and Hastings is no exception. At the bottom of my (our) road on Exmouth Place is a plaque to commemorate Katie McMullen, better known as the novelist Catherine Cookson. Cookson might have lived and died there without comment had she not been driven by a desire for ‘a better life’. Born the illegitimate daughter of a Tyneside barmaid, her childhood was spent in grinding poverty and it was the fear of going back there that drove her on. She adored Hastings, saying it was ‘another world and no one looked poor or even drab’.
Upwardly mobile (Picture by Les Kinch)
When she first arrived in 1931, she was a young woman in her 20s renting a few rooms in the house that now bears her name. She had come to work as the laundry mistress in Hastings workhouse. From here, she saved enough money to buy a large house on the outskirts of the old town that she turned into a boarding house, thereby shifting her class position enough to eventually marry Tom Cookson, a genteel teacher at the local grammar school.
But it wasn’t until she was 43 that she published her first novel, partly due to the encouragement of the writers’ group at the local library. By the time she died in 1998, she was a dame, Britain’s 17th richest woman and could boast that nine out of 10 books borrowed from libraries were hers.
Simon Thurley, the head of English Heritage said last week that despite reports to the contrary, they had every intention of continuing to place these commemorative tablets on our buildings. Do they really make a difference? Like Cookson herself, they usually tell a good story.
Next week: Whither plumbers?
Recently, Oscar Wilde’s tiny flat in Chelsea was for sale. Its price was hyped not only by its exclusive location on Tite Street, but also by dint of the permanent advert on the stucco. That, as if by osmosis, his unique talents might rub off on a new occupant sleeping in the room where he wrote An Ideal Husband.
Similar schemes exist all over the country and Hastings is no exception. At the bottom of my (our) road on Exmouth Place is a plaque to commemorate Katie McMullen, better known as the novelist Catherine Cookson. Cookson might have lived and died there without comment had she not been driven by a desire for ‘a better life’. Born the illegitimate daughter of a Tyneside barmaid, her childhood was spent in grinding poverty and it was the fear of going back there that drove her on. She adored Hastings, saying it was ‘another world and no one looked poor or even drab’.
Upwardly mobile (Picture by Les Kinch)When she first arrived in 1931, she was a young woman in her 20s renting a few rooms in the house that now bears her name. She had come to work as the laundry mistress in Hastings workhouse. From here, she saved enough money to buy a large house on the outskirts of the old town that she turned into a boarding house, thereby shifting her class position enough to eventually marry Tom Cookson, a genteel teacher at the local grammar school.
But it wasn’t until she was 43 that she published her first novel, partly due to the encouragement of the writers’ group at the local library. By the time she died in 1998, she was a dame, Britain’s 17th richest woman and could boast that nine out of 10 books borrowed from libraries were hers.
Simon Thurley, the head of English Heritage said last week that despite reports to the contrary, they had every intention of continuing to place these commemorative tablets on our buildings. Do they really make a difference? Like Cookson herself, they usually tell a good story.
Next week: Whither plumbers?