Present: Professor Sir David Cannadine (Chair)

Blue Plaques Panel

Open Minutes

Minutes of the 46th meeting held at 11.00am on the 18th March 2009 at St Andrew Holborn, London

Present: Professor Sir David Cannadine (Chair)

Dr Celina Fox (Vice-Chair)

Ms Maria Adebowale

Professor David Edgerton

Miss Julia Elton

Sir Nicholas Kenyon

Professor Andrew Motion

Dr Margaret Pelling

Dr Jane Ridley

Dr Gavin Stamp

Professor Lisa Tickner

Mr John Cattell – Blue Plaques Secretary

Ms Emily Cole – Head of Blue Plaques Team

Miss Esther Godfrey – Blue Plaques Historian

Mr Howard Spencer – Blue Plaques Historian

Ms Jane Biro – Blue Plaques Coordinator

Ms Elizabeth Wardle – Blue Plaques Administrator

Ms Vida Cody – Commission Secretariat Manager

Item 1 – Apologies and Announcements

1.1 Apologies for absence were received from Professor Sir Christopher Frayling and Mr Stephen Fry.

Item 2 – Minutes of the October 2008 meeting

2.1 The Open minutes of the October 2008 meeting were agreed and were signed by the Chair as a correct record.

2.2 The Exempt minutes of the October 2008 meeting were agreed and were signed by the Chair as a correct record.

Item 3 – Matters Arising and Secretary’s Report (Oral)

3.1 Mr Cattell congratulated Professor Sir David Cannadine on his recent knighthood, and thanked Dr Margaret Pelling for agreeing to serve a second term on the Panel.

3.2 Mr Cattell reported that Alison Frappell, Blue Plaques Coordinator, had left the Blue Plaques Team to return to Australia. He welcomed to the meeting her successor, Jane Biro, who had joined English Heritage from the National Trust, and Vida Cody, English Heritage’s Commission Secretariat Manager, who would be observing proceedings.

3.3 Following the October meeting, English Heritage had received very little negative feedback on the Panel’s rejections, and Mr Cattell explained that he therefore felt there was little need to elaborate upon this.

3.4 Mr Cattell advised that despite various attempts to contact the owners of the building at which it was proposed Sir David Lean be commemorated, the Blue Plaques Team had been disappointed to have thus far received no response.

3.5 Since the previous meeting, four plaques had been installed. Mr Cattell gave details of these to the Panel: the plaque to Dame Celia Johnson was unveiled in Richmond, in the presence of her daughters, following speeches by Professor Sir David Cannadine, Sir Tom Courtenay and Simon Williams; the plaque to Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe had been installed at 16 Grove Terrace and would be formally unveiled later in the spring; the plaque to Sir Ralph Richardson had been installed in Hampstead in mid-January, without the Old Vic Theatre-hosted unveiling that had been mooted; and the plaque to the Victorian body-builder Eugen Sandow had been unveiled in Holland Park, following speeches by Dr Fox and Sandow’s great-grandson.

At 11.07am, Professor Edgerton joined the meeting.

3.6 The Panel was informed that in addition to unfortunate coverage of the unveiling of the plaque to Dame Celia Johnson, which had focused on Lord Attenborough’s inability to attend, the scheme had been the subject of some negative publicity as a result of the unveiling of a Westminster City Council and Heritage Foundation plaque to Keith Moon, whom that Panel had rejected in 2008.

3.7 Mr Cattell drew the Panel’s attention to the frequent Freedom of Information requests received and dealt with by the Blue Plaques Team. Two requests in particular were highlighted. The first was by Chris Hastings of The Sunday Telegraph, and the second was by Elizabeth Kirkwood, an occasional writer for the Financial Times. Both involved lists of figures rejected by the Panel in recent years.

3.8 The Blue Plaques Historians had completed the task of contacting all persons who had made proposals under the former national scheme, and Mr Cattell drew the Panel’s attention to this. He went on to report that – thus far – English Heritage was aware of one plaque having been erected as a result of this: that to Ernest Gimson at the Belmont Hotel in Leicester on the initiative of the Leicester Group of the Victorian Society.

3.9 Mr Cattell explained that since Ms Frappell’s departure, preparations for the commemorative plaques conference had stalled slightly, but that it was nonetheless hoped that it would take place in late 2009 or early 2010. Mr Cattell would report on progress in bringing the conference to fruition at the Panel’s meeting in June.

3.10 The Panel was informed that the book Lived in London: Blue Plaques and the Stories Behind Them was with the printers. At the Panel’s suggestion, Boris Johnson had been sent a ‘save the date’ notice, but would be unable to attend. The GLA’s Director of Policy, Arts, Culture and Creative Industries, Miss Munira Mirza, would be present, as would Sir Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust. Formal invites to the launch would be sent out during April, and Panel members would receive a complimentary copy of the book. Mr Cattell and Professor Sir David Cannadine asked Panel members for suggestions and support regarding publicity for the book.

At 11.13am, Dr Fox joined the meeting.

3.11 Mr Cattell reported on various initiatives recently undertaken by members of the Blue Plaques Team in order to promote the scheme: in February, Ms Cole had given a talk on blue plaques at The Athenaeum; Mr Spencer had written an article on historians commemorated under the scheme for the website of the Institute of Historical Research, and another, for the English Heritage website, on women with plaques; and Ms Cole and Ms Wardle had compiled a list of plaques to North Americans for a section of the English Heritage website given over to Anglo-American heritage, for which a letter of thanks had been received from the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy.

At 11.16am, Dr Ridley joined the meeting.

3.12 Mr Cattell announced that the unveiling of the plaque to Dr George Scott Williamson and Dr Innes Pearse, founders of the Peckham Pioneer Health Centre, would take place on the 26th March at 2pm at 142 Queen’s Road, Peckham, in a ceremony hosted by The Peckham Society. The plaque to Sir Jack Cohen, retail entrepreneur, would be unveiled on the 16th April, 3.30pm, at 91 Ashfield Street, Whitechapel, in a ceremony hosted by Tesco. Finally, the plaque to the pioneers of nursery education, Rachel and Margaret McMillan would be installed without an unveiling in late March.

3.13 Mr Cattell reminded the Panel that the date of the next meeting would be Wednesday, 17th June 2009.

Item 4 – Information Reports

4.1 The reports giving information on plaques erected since the last meeting, and the progress of plaques approved for London, were noted by the Panel.

Item 5 – New Suggestions for Blue Plaques in London

5.1 The following new suggestions were endorsed for a full historical report to be made to the Panel:

Sir Mansfield Cumming (Armed Forces)

Sir Osbert Lancaster (Cartoons and Illustration)

Graham Sutherland (Fine Arts; Applied Arts)

Vladimir Nabokov (Literature; Overseas Visitors)

Albert Sammons (Music and Dance)

Maria Dickin (Philanthropy and Reform)

Daniel O’Connell (Philanthropy and Reform; Politics and Administration)

Aneurin Bevan (Politics and Administration)

The Panel recommended that a joint plaque – commemorating Bevan with Jennie Lee – should be erected at their former home in Belgravia. If consent from the building’s owners was not forthcoming, the suggestion was to be brought back before the Panel for reconsideration.

Jennie Lee (Politics and Administration)

The Panel recommended that a joint plaque – commemorating Lee with Aneurin Bevan – be erected at their former home in Belgravia. If consent from the building’s owners was not forthcoming, the suggestion was to be brought back before the Panel for reconsideration.

5.2 The Panel felt that the following new suggestions did not meet the selection criteria for the scheme and recommended that they should not be shortlisted:

Sir Henry Wilson (Armed Forces; Politics and Administration)

Sir George Robert Edwards (Aviation; Industry and Invention)

Peter Jones (Commerce and Business)

The Panel was of the opinion that Jones was not of national importance as a retailer and that he would be better commemorated with a local plaque in Chelsea.

Herbert William Garratt (Engineering and Transport)

The Panel acknowledged the importance of Garratt’s contributions to the field of engineering, but felt that the length of his residence in London was too short to merit commemoration, and that he would be more appropriately commemorated in Manchester.

Sir John Macneill (Engineering and Transport)

The Panel felt that consideration should be deferred until after the publication of the forthcoming full biography of Macneill.

Norman Cameron (Literature)

G. B. Edwards (Literature)

The Panel felt that that the existing plaque to Edwards in Guernsey represented appropriate and sufficient commemoration.

Barbara Pym (Literature)

Tolchard Evans (Music and Dance)

Jeanie Senior (Philanthropy and Reform; Politics and Administration)

George Edward Massee (Science)

Julian Tenison Woods (Religion; Science; Travel and Exploration)

The Panel was of the opinion that Woods’s connection to London was relatively slight, and suggested that he would be most appropriately commemorated in Australia.

Anton Walbrook (Theatre and Film)

The Panel noted Walbrook’s stature as an actor, but was mindful of the high standards and need for stringency in considering figures from the film industry.

At 11.42am, Dr Pelling joined the meeting.

Item 6 – Final Reports

6.1 John Lennon (1940-1980)