Oh What A Time... - #143 Memorials (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we’re taking a look at interesting memorials. We’ve got a brief history of statues in Britain, the history of the blue plaque and we’ve got a little on the history of naming things.Now sadly, there is no permanent memorial to West Ham winning the UEFA Conference League (at time of writing), but if you’ve got any interesting memorials you’d like to send our way or have any ideas for some, you can send them in here: [e-mail] in huge news, Oh What A Time is now on Patreon! From content you’ve never heard before to the incredible Oh What A Time chat group, there’s so much more OWAT to be enjoyed!On our Patreon you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O-Water Time. Welcome back. This is part two of Oh What a Time. This week we're discussing memorials and celebrations. Let's get on with the show. So today, I'm going to be talking to you about those little blue plaques, those little metal plaques that you see on houses every so often that say things like, Mary Grimbles, horticulturalist lived here, whatever it was to be 1863. You know those ones.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it'll be someone huge and then it'll be someone you've never heard of. But I find them endlessly fascinating. Yes, me too. And I love the idea of one day living in a house with one of those on. I thought exactly the same thing last night

because I drove past one. I was dropping my daughter off at Guides. And it's just a normal, very normal sort of residential street. The house looks quite similar to mine, but it's got to be a plaque on it. And I think it must add value to the house. I'm sure it does. Absolutely, yeah. What's the one near you then?

Did you take the time to stop and read it? Yeah, I think she is someone who is involved in code-bricking in World War II. That's pretty cool. Yeah, pretty cool. I think the real money boost, though, is probably an author who's written an incredibly important book somewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's the one you want. You want Dickens.

Yeah. Keats to someone on those lines One of that lot Especially if you know the particular book That's been written in that house I think that's surely the one That's going to really boost your money Yeah

I did once I was trying around North London Some fairly residential street And I saw I was sure I saw Tommy Cooper Had a blue plaque Somewhere in North London But my favourite one If you've ever been in Soho

Mozart has a blue plaque Yes he Where he lived above one of the cafes And if you look up in some I can't remember where exactly. I think it might be Frith Street. You can see Mozart has a blue plaque. Wow. And Jimmy Hendricks lived in the same house as Haydn, the composer, I think.

Wow. I'm sure that's right. I'm actually going to fact-check that. But I think they've both got a blue plaque. The first dentist in London had a plaque, but he had it removed. Okay. So in July 1863... It was handle. You've got at least acknowledge the joke, hell. Yeah, come back.

I'd say, I'm just saying the first dentist in London. You had it removed. Sorry, I'm going to say it again. Sorry, you seem to have your settings, your funny settings off. You seem to have missed. It was next door. What was next door? Jimmy Hendricks.

I'm now stuck between two threads of thought. Live next door. To Friedrich Handel. Okay. And incredibly, Hendricks was Handel's dentist. I think that's right. Yeah, yeah, sorry, I'd be confused now. So, July 1863, the Liberal MP for Dunfries in Scotland, William Ewitt,

he stands up in the House of Commons, the appeals to his colleagues for a new scheme. This is how it all starts. This is a quote from him at the time, to have inscribed on those houses in London, which had been inhabited by celebrated persons, the names of such persons. And with these words, London celebrated blue plaques scheme

began its life. For overseas listeners, just to explain, around London and across the UK, you will go past these buildings, these metal plaques, and they tell you who once lived there. And it took several more years after William Ewitt suggested this for the practicalities to be ironed out

and for a responsible body to take on the task of putting up these new memorials. In the end, it was the Society of Arts, which is now the Royal Society of Arts, which agreed to do so, running the plaque scheme until 1901 when it was taken over by the London County Council.

Now, a hundred points to either of you, if you can guess, who the first plaque was for in London? Who do you think it was? Remind me if the year it went up? This is in 1867. It's a big name. No surprise. The first one went up in 1867.

Yeah, early. I'm absolutely amazed at that. Well, then it's not going to be Dick. because that's too contemporary. No. Although, fun fact, on Dickens, there are loads of plaques for Dickens and a lot of them are stuff,

it'll be things like he visited this house one summer. It really is like that. You had a pint there once. Yeah, it really is. More than anyone else in Britain, there's loads of plaques associated Dickens, but often the most sort of slight relation

like he visited a friend there once or had breakfast there once and there's loads of them for him. While Ellis thinks about that, can I just give you my Charles Dickens fact? Yes, please see. It was just my favourite fact about a historical figure. Charles Dickens hated his wife.

But this is back in the day when divorce was a shameful thing to get divorced. So what him and his wife did is they divided their house in two. Wow. So the two of them like sectioned off their house. So they would both go in the door. And the house was literally... Both had really thin houses. Yeah, both lived either side of a really divided thin house.

Wow. There you go. Great fact. It's not a relaxing environment to write a novel in, is it? Bloody hell. Yeah. So, Elle, what's your answer? The first plaque in London?

Who are we thinking? Well, it's not going to be someone contemporary. I think it's going to be Chaucer. Okay. It is a writer. It's not Chaucer. Chris, you'd like to come in for the 100 points? Shakespeare?

Oh, decent guess. No, the first plaque ever erected in England was erected in February 1867 on 24 Hollis Street. Cavendish Square was put there to commemorate the house as a birthplace of the poet and freedom fighter Lord Byron. So Lord Byron kicks it off. Although I would argue the second plaque is the more interesting one. A second plaque that year was installed on 3A, now 1C, King Street, St James's, around the corner from Palmao to mark the London residents in exile of Napoleon the 3rd Emperor of France. Since the Byron plaque was lost when the building was then demolished in 1889,

Ironically, the oldest blue plaque in existence in the British capital today commemorates a Frenchman and it reads, Napoleon III lived here 1848 and it's still there today. That's the oldest, so number two. Exactly. And he's a fun fact to do with that plaque. It's the only plaque ever to be put up during a subject lifetime. Really? Wow. All of them since have been after death. It's worth noting it wasn't put up when he was living there. That would be really quite annoying. So we're drilling. Yeah, constant.

Or more to the point, people constantly ringing on the doorbell and asking for Napoleon. It says Napoleon lives here. So over the next 34 years, a Society of Arts put up more than 30 plaques all over London commemorating figures and their former houses such as, this is, what a role call this is. John Keats, Charles Dickens, Sir Rowland Hill, who's the inventor of the Penny Post, Samuel Johnson, Lorne Nelson, William Makepeace Thackeray, Michael Faraday, poet, Elizabeth Barrett Brown. the Scottish poet and playwright Joanna Bale, and fewer than half of these survive, many of them going the way of Lord Byron's memorial. And of course, once London embraced it, loads of other capitals around the world and communities follow suit. So this isn't the only place that has this. If you're a listener and there are similar plaques around you where you live

in the world, if you live abroad, do get in contact. I'd be fascinated to know what sort of people are celebrated where you live. For example, in America, where in 1914, the Pennsylvania Pennsylvania State Historic Markers Scheme was launched, and this program saw the creation of a bronze, then they turned it to aluminium plaque set in stone which details sites of special interest. Now, this isn't something we do here, and I really like it. At the 2,500 and more, actually, in situ to date, more than 300 can be found in Philadelphia, illustrating the significance of that city to American history. However, unlike the plaques we have here, which reference people, the Pennsylvania scheme took a more general view and it sort of commemorates things

like the site of the first world series game or the site of... I don't mind that. Yeah, I love it. Or the site of where Benjamin Franklin's house once stood and stuff like that. I think that's really interesting to me. Almost arguably more interesting. I kind of where these important events took place. Yeah.

Is it John Logie Baird has a blue placken on it? It says he first did, the first television signal came from this house. That's in London. I've seen that. Although, especially if it's a composer or a novel. if the house is clearly the same, if that was their house and you can imagine them actually

writing the book in the bedroom or the study or wherever it was and the house is still standing. There is something quite special about that, I think. Have you been to the Dickens Museum in London, which has his office as it was when he lived and wrote here. Yeah, it's in East London.

I'd love to go to that. The whole place is literally as his house was. Oh, well, I see, yeah. So, I mean, I love that idea. I think the fact that you can walk around and sort of realise these seemingly nondescript spaces and the history that took place there. The reminder of a history of a place, often serving as small kind of snippets of social, political and cultural history all in one go. Which is why it's no surprise they've spawned several similar

schemes devoted to those aspects of the past not often commemorated, for example. Purple plaques in Wales devoted to outstanding women, rainbow or sometimes pink plaques detail LGBT plus individuals and groups. And there's also a phenomenon across Europe. This is quite interesting. called the Stumbling Stone or the Stompestine or Pave de Memoir, as it's referred to by the French, which exist as a memorial to victims of the Holocaust. There are examples of Faroefield as Dublin, London, Helsinki, all across Europe. And on the other side of the coin, there are plaques that mark the quirkiest side of life. So literally everything has been taken over by this idea, referencing awful periods of the path,

more sort of eccentric things that have happened. An example here being one of my favourites is in Islington, which is erected in the next, name of Edith Garrard, who's a woman's suffragette campaigner, which reads Edith Garrard, 1872 to 1971, the suffragette that knew jujitsu lived here. So that's up on the plat there. And it's true. The four-foot-11, Mrs. Garrid, was a jiu-jitsu instructor, taught the ladies of the women's social and political union the finer details of martial arts, skills that were then used on the campaign trail to win the vote. And as a final point, as for William Ewart, the guy who came up with the blue plaque idea in the first place, well, he has three plaques. Two in London, one in Liverpool.

None, however, refer to his innovation, but instead point out that he's the promoter of public libraries and a reformer, which to me feels like a pity, like a plaque that celebrates the inventor of the blue plaque. Yeah. Feels like a missed opportunity. Isn't that like a missed opportunity? Isn't that like that's the bull's eye of all plaques, isn't it? Yeah, surely that's the one we need. Surely that one's gold or something. Yeah, exactly, yeah. A gold plaque.

It does feel like a massive missed opportunity, doesn't it? Yeah, it really does. I love that, Tom. Have I ever told you what my least favourite memorial is? What's that? I went to the Battle of Waterloo, and the battlefield at the Battle of Waterloo is now entirely different. I mean, famously, I think it was a ridge.

which was why the British chose that point for the battle because of the topography of the field. But because this battle was so consequential and so historic, I think it was a later Belgian king came along and just scooped up all the dirt into a big mound on the top of which they put a big statue. I think it was a big statue of a lion, as I remember, and I've been there.

But of course, in scooping all the dirt up, you destroy the battlefield. Oh, that's anything. So if you go to the site of the Battle of Waterloo, it looks nothing like it did on that day because this later guy came along and scooped all the dirt together to make a big statue, a big mound for a statue. So that's one thing you can't do with a memorial.

You can't destroy the thing you're seeking to memorialise. The topography is completely changed. Exactly. With the stroke of a pen, he just fucked it. Yeah. Absolutely. That's unbelievable. It's so dumb.

But I'm really glad you enjoyed that, Chris. And I'd like to dedicate that section, as I say, to the first dentist in London who had a plaque on his dentistry but had it removed. Enjoying it now, El? Now you've heard it for a third time.

Are you now enjoying it? I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think if I could perform it. If you do, do tell me, I'll come. Oh, you could perform it, of course. Yeah, I've got a gig in Glasgow on Thursday night. Can I get away with it? I think there'll be a frisson excitement

for anyone in the room who listens to O what a time as you go into that joke people nodding each other going he's doing it he's going to do it he's going to do Tom's joke Now then in the absence of a statue

or a plaque The best way of commemorating something is usually naming a location whether it's a street or a park or a naval vessel or a military base after that event or individual or a velodrome is the Girang Thomas Velladrome in Nupo

that would be amazing, wouldn't it? Can you imagine the Tom Crane Writers Suite at the BBC? I'd love that. Although I'm now thinking about having a velodrome named after me that's what I want now. I just no link. I thought that's what you were about to say.

Wouldn't it be amazing if a velodrome named after? No, I think that would just be absolutely mad. I use a line bike sometimes. Yeah, to be honest, though, you've got probably the most common attitude towards cycling. Yeah, you use a line bike every now and then. You can ride a bike. You learn to ride as a kid. But isn't it really about embracing the everyman and how we, the everyman, use bikes?

What finer comment. It can't all be about high-end racing, you know. Yeah, it can all be about sort of Pinarello road bikes that are 15 grand that they use in the Tour de France. So, welcome, and with that in mind, welcome to the Tom Crane Velodrome. Exactly. Now, they do this a lot in the United States. So most presidents have had a ship named after them, unless, of course, they've been bad, like Richard Nixon, Warren Harding, or too recent in office to qualify. So the USS George W. Bush is the most up-to-date ship in this respect. So there is no sort of, you know, Barack Obama frigate. George Washington, unsurprisingly, has lent his name to several ships, as well as a submarine. And of course, Capital City, the United States. States and a state. Yeah. They really like George Washington

and America. He's done, yeah. Like if they, you know, if London was called sort of Boris Johnson, Ville. Now, George Washington was the first to do that sort of thing.

So monarchs had got in ahead of him. The Carolinas, named after Charles I first, Georgia after Georgia the second. Now, I actually don't know how to pronounce this next one

because I know that I pronounced it incorrectly on the Ellis and John show a couple of weeks ago because we had emails in. Is it Maryland? Maryland? Maryland? Is that how you say it? After Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, Virginia and West Virginia after Elizabeth I, New York, after James II, they all derive from British monarchs or their spouses. Louisiana references Louis XIV and the Carolinas were first named after Charles the 9th of France, but the allegiance was swapped when the Brits took over. So below state level, the geography of the United States is completely shaped by command. memorative naming. Wow. Which obviously doesn't happen in the UK because it was such an old

country. So with counties, cities, towns, other designated places, particularly along the eastern seaboard, all named in reference to British or else European royals. So there are obvious places like James Town for James I. Wow. So it's the more obscure like Brunswick and Lunenberg, which was a title held by George I.e. the Duke of Brunswick, Lunberg. And Orange, also mentioned California, but certainly in New England, which recalled William the 3rd, A. William of Orange. And finally, there's even a Harkon County in South Dakota which is named after the king

or named for the King of Norway Harcon the 7th. Loonberg to me sounds like a sort of naughty kid in a school sitcom. Yeah, in the Simpsons, yeah, yeah. Lomburg. You'd have taxed on the headmaster's seat or something. Now, you'd expect this of national figureheads,

you know, of course, hence the list of state capitals which bear presidential names. You've got Lincoln in Nebraska, Jackson and Mississippi, Jefferson, in Sydney in Missouri, Madison and Wisconsin. Or counties, there are 30 for Washington, 22 for Jefferson, 21 for Andrew Jackson, 18 for James Madison, 16 for Abraham Lincoln,

two for Terry Roosevelt, one for William McKinley. Because Washington's got 30, Jefferson's got 22, 21 for Andrew Jackson. I think, would one suffice, or does it feel like a bit of us, you know, a kind of consolation prize? but really when it comes down to commemoration it gets forgotten because it's so mundane

in every day. So what you want a street names, especially on housing estates, for instance, ones that were put up after the Second World War where the name of an avenue or a road was an honour for the person involved but years later everyone's forgotten about whom it refers. But occasionally you'll get it wrong. Like

Colston for instance. Sometimes there are campaigns to change the names of streets because people have done the background reading and they've realised that the person involved was terrible. Actually, they don't want to live in a street or on an avenue or in a town that's named after that kind of person.

So sometimes street names, they have twists and turns. So Cleveland Walk in Bath. Do you know where that is, Tom? Yes, I recognise that. I think it's named a centre somewhere, I think. Yeah, it's named for a swimming pool, the Cleveland pools, probably the oldest surviving public swimming baths in the UK, built in about 1815 on land belonging to the Duke of Cleveland, William Vane.

The baths took his name. but the name of the street do not from the land owner but from the landmarks so they were literally the walk to the swim and cities, especially old cities like Bath are full of this kind of history is what makes digging into the way in which urban space

itself sort of commemorates its past so interesting. So in the Oldfield Park area of Bath there's a set of streets all named for members of the family of one Thomas Hughes, Delibia May who owned a brick and tile company in the area in the late 19th century. Really? So all the streets are

named after members of his family, yeah. That's where I went to school. That's so interesting. Is that mentioned in the street names? I don't know if there's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Tom Crane Year 9 Avenue. Because you had such a great year at 14th.

The Tom Crane A and GCSC French Avenue. So he was a keen rugby player. He was a translator of Latin poetry. He was a chess enthusiast, but he was also invested in housing. So the roads on his land commemorated his work. So there's May Brick Road. There were streets to celebrate his children,

Claude Avenue, Cynthia Road. Wow. But every so often, it catches us in a different way. It points to buildings or landmarks that were once there but aren't any longer. So a Stocks Lane, for instance, will hint at the location of the village stocks or tennis court road or street lane in places of some well-to-do towns like Cambridge or York. There's execution dock in London that tells its own story, obviously. But then you get places that are called things like Gallows Road or Gallows Corner, hangman's Hill, Hangman's Lane.

God, I never thought about that Gallo's corner. Yeah, I never thought about that. It's creepy, isn't it? So in the absence of maps of the past, or certainly the more distant past, the Ordinant Survey hadn't yet been invented. Deliberate and later commemorative naming of places serve to indicate where things were and who owned them and where things had been. This doesn't only matter in cities and towns, especially historical ones like London or

Edinburgh, but also in communities that were started from scratch during the Industrial Revolution. So if you were to look very carefully in between the streets named after Ryan Masters or coal owners or mill owners or their families or their titles in estates, and so in case you get a street named after an old stream or a farm or something else that had been in the landscape for a long time that predated industry coming to that area. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? So a street name may not be the first thing we think of when we consider historical commemoration, but it's the most ubiquitous. and it says something more than so-and-so lived here

it says this was here this is what we were doing then yeah yeah I love the idea of sort of one day living in the countryside on some lane like babbling brook lane or something like that I do there's something about that I've always been drawn to that like chocolate box

Cotswoldian type existence I've always wanted to live on hangman's hill for the same reason But Little Stream Road, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, like you're staying a sort of B&B and it'll be called something like The Granary. Yeah, exactly. That's what I want to be.

And you're like, yeah. What's Tom Crane doing? He's left London now. I know he made an absolute fortune or no, what a time, and he's moved to Devon. Yeah. What's the name of his house? The Grannery. Tom Crane at the Grannery.

Is his wife there? No, no, no. She left him because of his continued gaffes. Because of his insistence of repeating a terrible dentist joke, he wouldn't let go. They actually thought it was dementia, but no, it's just a bad joke, but he cannot let go. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.

I mean, I love the fact that all of these things, for me it's the chance of walking past these things and getting that quick look back in time. Whenever, you know, I think blue plaques of me, probably, and statues more so because it's very clear what it's about. But whenever you do catch a street name and you realize, oh, this is what it refers to. I find that wonderful. The fact that history is around us, history is everywhere. And there's moments when you catch it when you're out and about is just, I just, I love

that. I just talk about. Especially in the UK versus America. I went to New York last Christmas and it's like, you see, you see the odd memorial of things that happened like a hundred years ago. And I can imagine if like, because New York's a relatively young city, people will be like, oh wow, that's a hundred years old. You go to London, there's castles that are a thousand years old. Yeah. I mean, Tom's got a coin in his house that's 800 years old that he's just, that his son found with a cheap metal detector. I mean, that is absolutely, it's just in his kitchen.

Yeah. Your tone suggests I'm not the sort of person who should be in possession of that and it's worrying you. No, not at all. I'm terrified you're going to lose it. And I would love you to do something permanent with it. Yeah. Because if it's just knocking around, it is 800 years old.

And if it just knocks around your kitchen, If it reassures you, I will put that envelope inside another envelope, so it's double enveloped. That doesn't reassure me in any way at all. Also, you've got young children. No, don't you worry. Fort Knox. Fort Knox.

So there we are. That is Memorials. Thank you very much for listening. I love that. I found that really, really interesting. If you have any ideas for episodes you'd like us to cover, do get in contact. send them in and we really do use them. They kind of, they inform our thoughts. They're very, very

useful. So do keep sending those in. And don't forget, if you want to buy us a coffee, if you want to subscribe to the show and support the show, we give you two bonus episodes every month, add free listening, early episodes, and the full archive of bonus episodes that is now several years long. If you want to sign up, you can go to ohwatertime.com where you will find all the links. And from there, you can support the show. Brilliant. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back Next week with more history. Goodbye. Bye.

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