The Blue Plaque Brigade
19th December 2023
The boroughs of Enfield and Barnet are richly scattered with homes that bear a Blue Plaque – the prestigious marker of a historic VIP who once lived there. Dan Brotzel takes us on a whistle-stop tour of some very local heroes, icons and pioneers…
SPORT
Herbert Chapman (1878-1934), Haslemere Avenue, Hendon
Legendary manager of Arsenal during its illustrious late 1920s/1930s glory days, Chapman was football’s first ever Blue Plaque.
He broke the mould as a manager with an innovative focus on tactics and a pioneering understanding of how motivation could improve standards of play. He introduced many changes we now take for granted, from floodlit matches to numbered shirts.
A tireless profile-raiser for his club, he persuaded London Transport to change the tube station from Gillespie Road to Arsenal in 1932.
Harold Abrahams (1899-1978), Hadford Road, Barnet
Best-known as the heroic sprinter featured in Chariots of Fire, Abrahams was living in Barnet at the height of his success, winning gold at the 1924 Olympics and captaining the British Athletic Team at the 1928 Olympics.
In the 1924 100 metres, Abrahams equalled the then-Olympic record of 10.6 seconds in three consecutive races. As well as becoming the first European to win an Olympic sprint title, he won a silver medal in the 4x100-metre relay and held the British long-jump record (7.38 metres) for 30 years.
Graham Hill (1929-1975), Parkside Manor, Mill Hill
Two-time F1 World Champion Graham Hill is still the only driver in history to have achieved the motor racing ‘triple crown’ of winning Le Mans, Indianapolis and the Formula One drivers’ world championship.
After racing two seasons for Lotus, he became world champion for the first time in 1962, with British Racing Motors – the first British driver to do so in an all-British car. His second world title was with Lotus in 1968. The house in Mill Hill would also be the childhood home of another world champion, Hill’s son Damon.
WARTIME HEROES
Charles Joseph Coward, 133 Chichester Road, Edmonton
The entirely misnamed Coward was a British soldier who helped Jewish prisoners escape from Auschwitz and played a key role as a witness in the post-war Nuremberg trials.
As a prisoner of war from 1940, he made several escape attempts from various camps before ending up at a labour camp in the Auschwitz complex in 1943. Because of his German-speaking skills he was made a Red Cross Trustee responsible for British POWs, and made use of this position to smuggle Jewish prisoners out of Auschwitz by swapping their identities with those of non-Jewish inmates who had died in the camp. He was later known for his exploits as ‘The Count of Auschwitz’.
As well as his testimony at Nuremberg, his evidence at a trial in Germany in 1953 enabled thousands of survivors from Auschwitz to file lawsuits for compensation against their former oppressors.
Juan Garcia Pujol (1912-88), Crespigny Road, Hendon
Operating under the codename ‘Garbo’, Spanish-born Juan Pujol Garcia was one of the most important secret agents of the Second World War.
From 35 Crespigny Gardens, an MI5 safe house and supposedly operating as a German spy, he wove a web of deception involving almost 30 fictitious agents that was crucial in ensuring the success of D-Day.
Working with his handler Tomás Harris, Pujol efforts culminated in Operation Fortitude, which succeeded in deceiving the Germans about the timing, location and scale of the Allied invasion of Normandy. Thanks to Pujol, the Germans expected the main attack to come at Pas de Calais, rather than Normandy, and diverted resources accordingly.
Pujol received a secret MBE from the British in 1944, but his identity as ‘Garbo’ was not made public for another 40 years.
Wing Commander JRD ‘Bob’ Braham (1920-74), Hendon Way, Barnet
As an RAF pilot, Braham won more awards for gallantry than any other British serviceman, with a total of seven decorations.
Specialising as a night fighter, Braham brought down his first plane in 1940, the first of 29. In 1942 he took command of 141 Squadron at Ford, Sussex, and became the RAF’s youngest-ever wing commander.
During the course of his RAF career he survived 11 hits on his aircraft and 5 crash landings. After being downed over Denmark in 19444, he spent the rest of the war in prison camps. He won both the Distinguished Service Order and the Distinguished Flying Cross three times over, a unique feat.
Amy Johnson (1903-1941), Hendon Way, Cricklewood
In 1930, pioneering aviator Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. She broke a number of speed records in the 1930s, including a record flight from Britain to Japan in 1931.
Apart from her record-breaking flights, she was the first British woman to qualify as a ground engineer. In the second world war, she became a pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary.
On a routine flight in January 1941, she encountered difficulties in poor weather conditions, and is presumed to have drowned after bailing out over the Thames estuary. Her body was never recovered.
LITERATURE
Charles and Mary Lamb, Church Street, Edmonton
Brother and sister Charles and Mary Lamb were writers best known for their books of children’s stories.
The siblings came to live together as young adults in 1796 after Mary – who experienced serious mental health problems throughout her life – killed their mother with a table knife at their Holborn lodgings. Biographers have since categorised Mary’s illness as bipolar disorder, and it appears her condition was exacerbated by the extreme strain she was under while caring for both her parents and working to support them.
Mary was released after trial and entrusted to her brother. His life-long commitment to her care kept her out of Bethlem Hospital but involved great self-sacrifice. In happy times, the pair were popular among London’s literary circle, counting Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, John Keats and Leigh Hunt among their friends.
As writers, Mary and Charles’s collaborations included the books Tales from Shakespear [sic] (1807), Poetry for Children, Entirely Original (1809), and Mrs Leicester’s School (1809). In the latter and in her essay ‘On needle-work’ (1815), Mary demonstrated her concern for the welfare of disadvantaged women and girls.
Sadly Mary’s mental health struggles did not improve over time, and her final years here were interspersed with periods in private asylums.
Stevie Smith (1902-1971), Avondale Road, Palmers Green
Smith’s ‘Not Waving But Drowning’ was voted Britain’s fourth most popular poem in 1995. Her distinctive voice, quirky and ironic, mixes the tragic and comic, and often hints at an underlying quiet desperation.
Smith spent most of her life in Palmers Green. She was fond of Grovelands Park and for many years was a keen Anglican churchgoer. Later she would lose her faith but continue to refer to herself as ‘a lapsed atheist’.
Her poems and three novels can be playful and lightly satirical. She wrote affectionately about cats and was quietly sarcastic about men and marriage. But darkness always threatened. In 1953, she was invalided out of work on a full pension after attacking her employer with a pair of scissors then attempting suicide.
Happily she recovered and resumed writing, and in 1970 was awarded the Queen’s Medal for poetry.
Joseph Whitaker (1820-1895), Silver Street, Enfield
Apprenticed to a bookseller at the age of 14, books and publishing were Whitaker’s whole life.
He is best known for launching in 1869 Whitaker’s Almanack, the annual reference book that continues to this day. But he also founded The Bookseller in 1858, still the book trade’s in-house organ.
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), North End Road, Golders Green
Novelist, journalist and travel writer, Waugh was widely considered the most brilliant satirist of his day.
Many of his novels continue to be regarded as classics – among them Brideshead Revisited, Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust, Scoop and the Sword of Honour trilogy.
PERFORMERS
Robert Donat (1905-1958), Meadway, Hampstead Garden Suburb
The English actor is probably best remembered for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), for which he won a Best Actor Oscar.
In the 1930s he was Britain’s pre-eminent romantic lead, with a string of films for Alexander Korda’s London Studios. He worked in parallel on the stage throughout his career, both as an actor and producer/owner.
His final role was in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), opposite Ingrid Bergman. His last words in the film: ‘We shall not see each other again, I think. Farewell.’
Henry Hall (1898-1989), Harman Drive, Cricklewood
Hall was a bandleader who appeared regularly on BBC Radio during the British dance band era of the 1920s and 1930s, and continued to perform right up to the 1960s.
He became band leader of the BBC Dance Orchestra in 1932, which made him into a national celebrity with his signature theme of ‘It's Just the Time for Dancing’ and his sign-off catchphrase, ‘Here's to the next time!’.
Hall’s recording of ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ in 1934 sold over a million copies. He was guest conductor of the ship's orchestra on the Queen Mary's maiden voyage in 1936, and played widely for troops and in factories around Britain in the second world war. He was awarded the CBE in 1970.
Dame Myra Hess (1890-1965), Wildwood Road, Hampstead Garden Suburb
Concert pianist Hess was best known for her interpretations of works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann. Right through the second world war, even at the height of the Nazi bombing, she organised and performed in daily concerts at the National Gallery to help boost Londoners’ morale.
Harry Relph (1867-1928), Shirehall Park, Hendon
The music hall comedian, best known as Little Tich, was of portly build but just 4 feet six inches tall. He was best known for his athletic Big Boot Dance, for which he wore boots 28 inches long (or half his height!).
Over a storied career Ralph performed in music hall, in Christmas pantomimes alongside Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd, as a variety artist in Paris, and on successful tours to the US.
Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-1983), Kenwood Close, Hampstead Garden Suburb
The legendary actor, subject of a thousand anecdotes, enjoyed an illustrious stage and film career spanning more than five decades and – with Gielgud and Olivier – was widely considered one of the finest talents of his generation.
He began playing Shelespeare in rep at 18, and joined the Old Vic in 1930, eventually becoming actor and co-director alongside Laurence Olivier. He was perhaps best known on stage for the roles of Peer Gynt and Falstaff after the second world war.
His film credits included Richard III (1955), Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (1965). He was knighted in 1947.
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Abram Ames (1914-1996), The Vale, Golders Green
This award-winning poster artist and designer was best-known for his bold wartime campaigns and iconic Festival of Britain symbol.
The son of Jewish immigrants, he was already an established designer by the time he joined the Army in 1940. Here he used humour in public health and recruitment campaigns, but one poster was withdrawn by Churchill for expressing too clearly his concerns about social inequality. Ames also witnessed the atrocities of Belsen at first hand, which informed his numerous posters for Jewish charities and causes.
Ames described his approach – evidenced in high-profile designs for the likes of British Railways, British European Airways, Guinness, and the 3d stamp for the 1948 London Olympics – as ‘maximum meaning, minimal means’. Most began as tiny sketches because, as he said, ‘If ideas don’t work an inch high they will never work.’
John Linnell (1792-1882) and William Blake (1757-1827), North End, Hampstead
Built around 1600, the weatherboarded, Grade II listed Wyldes Farm was rented in the years 1824-28 by the painter John Linnell, who frequently played host to his friend, the visionary poet, artist and printmaker William Blake.
Thomas Tait Smith (1882-1954), Wyldes Close, Hampstead
This Scottish Modernist architect designed buildings around the world in Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles, including St Andrew's House, Edinburgh (HQ of the Scottish Government), and the pylons for Sydney Harbour Bridge.
POLITICS AND PUBLIC SERVICE
Mary Macarthur (1880-1921), Woodstock Road, Golders Green
The trade unionist and campaigner for working women played a substantial role in growing female membership of trade unions from 142,000 in 1892 to 1,342,000 in 1920.
Renowned as a powerful orator, she founded the National Federation of Women Workers (NFWW) in 1906 and an accompanying newspaper, The Woman Worker.
She campaigned indefatigably for an end to women’s low pay and long hours, and the regulation of homeworking; supported women strikers; and in the first world war compelled the Government to improve wages and conditions for women working in munitions factories.
Frank Pick (1878-1941), Wildwood Road, Hampstead Garden Suburb
The pioneering transport administrator was chief executive officer of the London Passenger Transport Board from its creation in 1933 until 1940.
With an interest in public design, Pick drove London Underground's bold graphic identity and modern architecture, establishing a brand that’s still used today. He also oversaw the expansion of the Tube and bus network into the suburbs.
SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994), Burlington Rise, East Barnet
The Vienna-born philosopher and intellectual giant can be said to have changed the way we think about science.
Where scientific theories had traditionally been tested by a process of verification, Popper argued that they could only be tested by falsification: only if a theory has the potential to be falsified can it be counted as science. Theories which failed this test (which included for Popper those of Marx, Jung and Freud) were relegated to the status of ‘pseudoscience’.
Sir William Bowman (1816-1892), North End Road, Golders Green
The ophthalmic surgeon and anatomist has a number of body parts named after him.
In his research on the kidney, Bowman discovered how the organ uses filtration to produce urine. A part of the kidney is now known as Bowman’s Capsule. He later identified three elements of the cornea – now known as Bowman’s Membrane, Bowman’s Muscle and Bowman’s Tubes – and advanced treatments for cataracts and detached retinas.
Dame Ida Mann (1893-1983), Minster Road, West Hampstead
This pioneering ophthalmologist made significant contributions to understanding of the development of the eye in embryo, and the influences of genetic and social factors on eye disease around the world.
She wrote a number of definite works on aspects of ophthalmology, developed innovative surgical techniques, and played a key role in the development of contact lenses.
By 1927, Mann was on staff at Moorfields Eye Hospital and had her own Harley Street practice, a rare feat in a male-dominated era. In the second world war she risked the bombs to continue treating ophthalmic emergencies at Moorfields, and carried out research into the treatment of mustard gas burns of the eye. Later she became the first female Professor at Oxford University, where her efforts revolutionised the study of her field.
After moving to Perth and the death of her husband, she travelled extensively in Australasia to study eye disease as it affected different races and cultures, especially Aboriginal people. This research led to perhaps her best-known work, Culture, Race, Climate and Eye Disease (1966).
