Blue Plaques

Around London – Your Roman influences; celebrating the City; and, of Journeys and kinship…

by exploringlondon

• The Museum of London is calling on Londoners to submit images showing “Roman influences in London today” as part of its forthcoming Our Londinium 2012 exhibition, a revamping of the museum’s Roman gallery. In what is the largest update made to the museum’s Roman gallery since it opened in 1994, the  reworked gallery looks at parallels between Roman London and the city today and features important Roman artifacts such as a bust of the Emperor Hadrian found on the Thames foreshore (part of the British Museum’s collection, this will be displayed for six months before being replaced by a replica) alongside modern objects such as the V for Vendetta masks worn by protestors in the Occupy movement. The exhibition is being co-curated by young people from Junction, the Museum of London’s youth panel, and they’re calling on people to submit their images showing how the city’s Roman past still resonates even today (see example pictured). For details on how to submit images via email of Flickr, head to www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ol2012map.

• Secrets will be revealed, we’re promised, as part of the City of London’s Celebrate the City: four days in the Square Mile event to be held from 21st to 24th June. Events held in the City our the four days, many of which will be free, include a musical extravaganza to launch the event in Guildhall Yard as well as exhibitions, walks and talks, a chance to explore buildings like Livery Company Halls, the Bank of England and the Mansion House, family entertainment at the Cheapside Fayre and music and activities at sites across the Square Mile including the Barbican Centre, Museum of London and churches. We’ll have more to come on this. For now, head to www.visitthecity.co.uk/culture2012 for more information.

• Architectural historian and former director of the Sir John Soane Museum, Sir John Summerson, has been honored with an English Heritage blue plaque at his former home  London’s north-west. Sir John (1904-1992) lived at the property at 1 Eton Villas in Chalk Farm for more than 40 years. He was the director of the Sir John Soane Museum from 1945 to 1984. For more, see www.english-heritage.org.uk/discover/blue-plaques/.

• Architecture students are being invited to submit designs for a new stone seating area on the City thoroughfare of Cheapside. The winning student will work with trainee masons from the Cathedral Works Organisation and The Mason’s Company with the new seating area unveiled in October. For an application pack and full brief, see For an application pack and full brief, please contact Melanie Charalambous, Department of the Built Environment, City of London Corporation, PO Box 270, Guildhall, London, EC2P 2EJ or call 020 7332 3155 or email stonebench@cityoflondon.gov.uk.

• Now On: Journeys and kinship. This display at the Museum of London Docklands showcases the creative output of a community collaboration project which involved a group of young Londoners working with visual artist Jean Joseph, Caribbean Calypso musician Alexander D Great and Yvonne Wilson from training organisation Equi-Vision. The centrepiece of the exhibition – which explores themes highlighted in the museum’s permanent gallery, London, Sugar and Slavery, on the city’s involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade  – is an artwork by Joseph entitled Sales Over Centuries, 2010, which features plaster face casts of 42 people from the African diaspora who were born in or currently live in London. In response to it, the young Londoners have created their own works including face casts, music, film and photography. Runs until 4th November. Entry is free. For more, see www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Docklands/.

Around London – John Carter at Ham House; John Hegley, Keats’ poet-in-residence; blue plaque writers; and, mapping the Blitz…

by exploringlondon

• Ham House near Richmond in London’s south west is making a star appearance in the new Disney movie, John Carter. The 17th century mansion, located on the Thames, is doubling as a New York mansion on the Hudson River and the cast and crew spent six weeks filming there in January last year. The film is an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 sci-fi comic-book John Carter of Mars, about a civil war veteran who is magically transported to a turbulent new life on the red planet. For more on Ham House, see www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ham-house/. PICTURE: ©2011 Disney.

• North London born poet John Hegley has been appointed poet-in-residence at Keats House in Hampstead for this summer. Hegley, whose poetry collections include Glad to Wear Glasses, The Sound of Paint Drying and My Dog is a Carrot, will host workshops and readings during his residency which takes place from 1st May to 31st October. He will also host the launch and closing event of the Keats House Festival, held at the house between 1st and 10th June, and present a series of meetings, entitled Sunday Tea with John (Keats), on the last Sunday of each month. These will include music and a 20 minute lecture about a particular aspect of Keats’ life. For more, see www.keatshouse.cityoflondon.gov.uk.

• Writers Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bowen have been commemorated with English Heritage blue plaques. Caribbean-born Rhys (1890-1979) lived at Paultons House, Paultons Square, in Chelsea in the 1930s and it was while here that she developed her career as a novelist and penned Good Morning, Midnight (1939), now considered one of her finest works. Meanwhile the Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) lived at 2 Clarence Terrace, Regents Park, for 17 years and during her time there wrote her two most celebrated works, The Death of the Heart (1938) and The Heat of the Day (1949). Last month blue plaques were unveiled commemorating the home of singer Elisabeth Welch (1904-2003) – described by her biographer as “Britain’s first black star” – at Ovington Court in Kensington and that of florist to royalty Constance Spry (1886 – 1960) on the site of her Mayfair shop at 64 South Audley Street. For more, see www.english-heritage.org.uk/discover/blue-plaques/.

• Now on: Mapping the London Blitz. This exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell centres on a series of bomb damage maps made during the dark days of World War II. Created by the London County Council, the 110 large maps used a color code to indicate the extent of damage in individual buildings and covered 117 square miles. Now in its last days – exhibition closes on 29th March. For more, see www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/lma.